Here we GO!!!
| Oct 23, 2007 | 12:00 AM | Int'l shipment release | ADDIS ABABA ET | | ||||||||||
| 12:00 AM | Held at FedEx location for recipient pickup | ADDIS ABABA ET | Package available for pickup at: HIGHER NO 21 |
| Date/Time |  | Activity | | Location | | Details | |||||||||
| Oct 21, 2007 | 12:01 AM | Arrived at FedEx location | FRANKFURT DE | ||||||||||||
| 12:01 AM | In transit | FRANKFURT DE | |||||||||||||
| Oct 20, 2007 | 5:42 AM | Departed FedEx location | MEMPHIS, TN | ||||||||||||
| 1:17 AM | Departed FedEx location | MEMPHIS, TN | |||||||||||||
| 12:30 AM | Arrived at FedEx location | MEMPHIS, TN | |||||||||||||
| Oct 19, 2007 | 9:34 PM | Left origin | HERNDON, VA | ||||||||||||
| 3:44 PM | Picked up | HERNDON, VA | |||||||||||||
| 1:21 PM | Package data transmitted to FedEx | ||||||||||||||
Over the past two weeks, our precious collection of papers, our dossier, has visited the U.S. State Department and the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington, D.C. We received a notice yesterday, Friday, October 19, 2007, that FedEx now has possession of it, and it is fix'n ta leave the country and go to Ethiopia!!! So far, it has gone from VA to TN, and unfortunately, that won't be the last time that it will appear to be traveling the wrong way! Any predictions on how long it will take to get there?
Scott and Jean's (introduced below) dossier arrived in China this week also!! We are so excited for them!
Our agency, America World, also handed out another batch of referrals. (A "referral" is when a family is notified that they have been matched with a child or children.) Another 6 children have been offered to become part of 5 families! That is a total of 12 children in 10 families in just the past 2 weeks!
It is so wonderful to watch as these children are placed in wonderful, Christian homes! Congratulations to those of you who got to "meet" your children and will be on your ways before you know it! Woo hooo!
Annika's cast comes off on October 31. She declared that is smells like a dirty shoe. She's right!
William got 8 stitches in his leg Thursday night after ripping it open on the rough end of a piece of metal conduit. EWWWW! He will be OK. After all of the stitching he's had over the years, he says this is the most in one spot!
Our dossier is still at our agency. I don't really know what they're doing to it, but it is to go to the U.S. State Department next week to be authenticated. Here is great news from our agency!
http://awaa.org/weeklyupdate/
America World is happy to announce that we received referrals for six children this week; four of the children were males, and two of the children were females. The ages of the children ranged from approximately 1 ½ months to 11 months old. There are five families currently reviewing the referrals for these children. We look forward to receiving their responses within the next week! (All of the families did accept their referrals last week.)
America World signed a lease for a transition home in Addis Ababa last week! Once this home is up and running, the children who are being adopting by America World families, will be transitioned to this home from the orphanage between the time of referral and travel. In addition to this, our in-country staff liaison has recently hired two additional staff to help with adoption processing. Our agency believes that both of these accomplishments will lead to a smoother, more efficient adoption process for Ethiopia families, so we are happy to share this news!
One of the very first people I met when I went off to College was Scott, and shortly there-after, his future wife Jean. Scott lived right down the hall, and we became fast friends. We were close all though college and even shared a house off-campus our senior year. Scott and Jean were college sweethearts and married shortly after graduation. We were in each-other's weddings and stayed close for many years after graduation. When we moved to Georgia, we saw them less and less and then Scott joined the Air Force and has now been sent to Guam. Guam?! I had to look that one up on a map (It's near the Philippines if that helps).
A couple of years ago, we heard from Jean and she was starting to home school her two boys and looking for help, advice, and support from someone who had "been there." A couple of months ago, I found out that Scott and Jean are in the process of adopting from China. That is so exciting! We are at about the same stage in our paper pregnancies, but things are quite a bit different for them trying to get their orphan petition from Guam and having to send documents back to the states for authentication.
It's just so amazing to me that after all these years, we still have so much in common -- HAPPY 15th SCOTT & JEAN
Oh, Happy Day! Our dossier is safely in the hands of our America World family coordinator in McLean, VA!!
When I got home from the orthopedic office this afternoon with Annika, I found our mailbox absolutely stuffed with all of the mail that the post office had been holding since last Thursday. As I sat and sorted out the mail that needed to be looked at more thoroughly from the garbage, I had an inkling that something special like a check could be in the pile when I came across an envelope from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services...
I opened the envelope, and there for four sheets of paper stapled together. They are black and white photocopies. The first one has a Department of Homeland Security seal at the top that has been cut off when it was copied. About a quarter of the way down the page, it reads in all caps:
