July Update

It has been almost one year since we submitted our paperwork for our daughter from Ethiopia. We continue to pray for her (whether born or unborn) and her birth family. We hope those of you closely folllowing our blog keep her and her birth family in your prayers as well.

Below is the most recent update from our agency:

We had a nice holiday weekend. It is a very busy time now at AAI as we work to get as many cases filed in court as possible before the closure in early August.

The first four cases under the new system, where parents must appear for the second court hearing, passed last week. There were minor problems with two of the cases but those should be cleared up in time for all six of these families to appear in court on July 28. So far this process has worked smoothly and we will keep you informed.

We received 11 new children in June. Our Ethiopian staff is working on preparing the children’s files so that they can be referred to families as soon as possible.

You probably read our Special Appeal for funds to help provide for care of the children for whom we have been unable to get legal documents. Thank you so much to those of you who have responded; your donations are very much appreciated. There are about 35 youngsters in this group; many are little ones under 18 months and we hope to have this cleared up soon so we can refer these children as well. If you still wish to donate, click here.

We have been working on a revised fee schedule. The new fees will go into effect for any fees due after October 10, 2010. (Thankfully this was only a slight increase for us since we are already in process).

There will be an increase of $500 per child for the Ethiopia fee. We are now required to provide the court with birth certificates for every child. The new fee covers the cost of the birth certificate as well as the time and travel involved for our staff to obtain it. The court is also requiring that the entire dossier be translated into Amharic. This is a time consuming and expensive process that unfortunately necessitates a fee increase.

At this time we have five boys in the 4 to 5 year old range with complete or very nearly complete files. If anyone with a dossier in Ethiopia is interested in one of these little guys, Gail believes it would be possible to get their cases into court before it closes. We never know ahead of time exactly when the court will close, but it is generally about the second week in August. Please call the office immediately if you would like to consider one of these children.

We hope you are having a good summer. It is finally warming up here. Again, we thank you for your understanding and patience. We have placed a record number of children from Ethiopia the first six months of the year and expect this trend to continue.