A Bump in the Road

I have put off writing this post because it seemed too confusing to try and explain (and I was secretly hoping it would just resolve itself), but this is part of our journey, too, so I will try and explain it as best as I can.

Our adoption agency, has US embassy appointments in Ethiopia every other Monday. This is the appointment that we are required to be at and determines when we travel to Ethiopia. For several reasons, our adoption agency requested an additional embassy date in between their two normally scheduled dates. The US embassy granted their request, so we purchased our plane tickets. Several days later, we were informed that the US embassy had decided to overturn their original decision and no longer allow us to have our embassy date on August 3rd. So that left us with two options, 1) change our tickets to one week later for embassy on August 10th, however, just in those few days the coach seats sold out and only business is available, which puts us at a total of $4,500 to change the tickets, OR 2) leave the tickets as is and pray all our paperwork arrives in time for us to make the embassy appointment two weeks prior on July 27. However, if the paperwork does not arrive, I will have to stay until the next emabsssy date on August 10th, and Wai Tim will return home. And then I will just have to buy a new one-way ticket home on August 13th. Certainly not an ideal situation, but we press on with what we have before us. Either way, we will come home with a beautiful little girl.

WE have decided to leave our tickets as is and pray for a miracle that all our documents are ready to go by Monday. It is a bit of a stretch to say it mildly. This change also effects when and how we will be traveling around Ethiopia, but like the agency keeps telling me ... "we will make it work." So we may have to audible things as we go, but we should know more by the time we arrive in Ethiopia on Saturday.

We fly out Friday at noon and arrive on Saturday at noon (a 20 hour flight with a 4 hour layover in Amsterdam). Ethiopia is 10 hours ahead of us, so that puts us in Ethiopia about 10pm Saturday night. We are so hoping we get to meet sweet Esther on Sunday, but again, plans have been all turned around and we have to stay flexible.

Thank you for following our journey, and thank you most of all for praying for us. I feel covered by the Lord and surrounded by your love.