Friday, October 27 report

Happy Birthday, Dad! Today he and Mom are traveling to Gainesville to share at The Family Church, faithful supporters of Planters' ministry in Albania. The church is sending their first team to Albania in March! We're super excited about these wonderful people going to this next level in their participation!

That aside, we learned this afternoon that the AAC did not meet yesterday as believed -- the chairwoman is in the States until early next week! Please pray for patience on our part, and pray that there wouldn't be any more delays as we need to clear this hurdle before our paperwork can be sent to the courts. THEN we will hopefully get a date at which point we can buy airline tickets!!!

Meanwhile, I have been throwing myself into getting Ellie's room ready for her. I'm having a super difficult time concentrating on anything that doesn't need my immediate attention and this helps me feel that I'm accomplishing some level of productivity. I hadn't felt any particular need to start that project before we got our referral. We knew there would be some time before we traveled to prepare the space for whomever we would be bringing into our family. We also didn't know how long such a room might sit empty, and whether to prepare it for a boy or a girl, or for one of what age... so we waited, which I don't think was necessarily a bad idea. It's been so fun to select things with her in mind.

Tonight we took Hannah out for supper in Lexington (she is visiting us until Tuesday) and did some shopping, buying some photo frames for the wall, a lamp, and a white 3x3 cube storage unit with pink fabric drawers that will probably hold toys and books and such. Nathan's assembling it now! It's fun to watch the room begin to transform from an office/guestroom to a little girl's place. It definitely helps make her feel more real.

Here's a photo of the finished unit and part of her room to date:

the meeting is Thursday...

Blogger's been down most of this evening and this is the first I've been able to get online. Supposedly the AAC is meeting tomorrow and our acceptance paperwork will be going before them -- given the time difference, in just a few hours!

AAC Meeting this week

Thanks to those of you who are checking the blog when we feel like we really have little to report! This past weekend we were blessed to celebrate my grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary with many extended family in central Illinois. While together our family showered us with several gifts for Ellie! I may put most things straight into a suitcase to take to Albania, whenever that trip may be!

We received word on Thursday that the Albanian Adoption Committee (AAC) meets this week and at this meeting will formally approve our acceptance of Ellie as our "referral." This is one step that has to be completed before the court date can be set, and a step of which we were unaware. According to our agency (Bethany), the AAC gave Ellie to them to refer to any of their waiting couples and it was the agency's decision to refer her to us, not the AAC's. So now the AAC has to approve this "match." Our heart skipped a beat when we heard this, but Bethany doesn't seem too concerned so we try not to be. As our liaison told us, we've already had our application reviewed by the AAC this past summer and were accepted into their registry, so there shouldn't be any issues -- they're just looking for a glaring reason why we wouldn't be a good fit for her.

Yesterday before returning to KY we met with our friends who adopted from Albania in '04. Having reached a new stage in the process we had a whole new round of questions to ask like, "Do we need to bring a car seat?" and "What kind of gifts do we need to take?". It's so nice to have the model of their experience to give some form to an otherwise vague expectation of our time in Albania.

Thank you for your continued prayers! We hope to hear the AAC's decision by the end of the week, and then a court date within a couple of weeks after that!

a little geography...

I thought the map above would give you a better idea 1.) where to find Albania (don't be ashamed if you didn't know) and 2.) see where Ellie is living (Vlore) in relation to my parents' home (Tirana). By car it's about a 4-hour drive.

Columbus Day

Okay! We've officially signed all the acceptance documents, had them notarized, certified, & apostilled (in the Capitol Building in Frankfort) and overnighted them to Bethany Int'l in Michigan (thank goodness for UPS on federal holidays when the PO is closed!). The folks in Michigan will make sure everything is in order and send the paperwork to Albania via DHL, hopefully to be received by the end of the week. It's our understanding that the unofficial scanned copies are already in Albania waiting on translation.

From here we wait for Albania to assign us court date! We've been told it could take 2-4 weeks from the time they receive our translated petition to schedule us in for a date a few weeks beyond that. It all depends on when the Judge has room in his docket and when we can travel. We literally could have only two weeks to line up our airline tickets and pack. Realistically, we don't expect to travel before the middle of November.

An encouraging bit of news came this afternoon in the form of a phone call from my mom. She was on the phone with our good friend Pepper (a nickname my dad gave him "way back when" when Albanian names didn't roll so easily off the tongue). Pepper is a wonderful Christian man that I met through my parents in 1994 when he was assisting an American missionary friend in church planting. Since then, Pepper has moved onto other charitable work employed by an American organization that sponsors several state orphanages in Albania. Over the years our family has stayed close with he and his wife and count them as dear friends.

On the phone with Pepper today Mom learned that Ellie's orphanage is one of the ones sponsored by Pepper's employer and he knows the director of her orphanage very well! Before Mom and Dad could tell him our good news (he learned about it from another of our close friends in Tirana) he put in a call to his colleague in Vlore to inquire about Ellie. The orphanage director told him that he knew her and that she was a good little girl. (We take it that means she is normal and healthy). Pepper went on to offer to travel with us down to Vlore and assist us in any way! He usually has business to conduct down there so he said it's no problem at all! We were so relieved to hear this. Pepper is a very humble man, but is very well respected by anyone who knows him. He also has a tender, compassionate heart for the kids in the orphanage system and is a great advocate on their behalf. In an unfamiliar place like Vlore, it will be good to have a friend by our side who has the authority to be a BIG help!

We continue to be amazed at how God is working ahead of us! Today I read in Isaiah 45:2-3, "I will go before you and make the rough places smooth. I will shatter the doors of bronze and cut through their iron bars. I will give you the treasures of darkness and hidden wealth of secret places, in order that you may know that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, who calls you by your name." (NASB) This is one incredible faith journey I can't begin to describe. Thank you for your continued prayers and notes of encouragement! In the last few days we've heard from family and friends in 16 states and 9 countries!

Introducing Ellie!

Here's the best of the photos Bethany sent us this morning (we got 20)! What a whirlwind today has been! For the rest of my life I'll never forget the moment "the phone call" came (9:11AM)!

We knew the Albanian Adoption Committee met in September, but as these first days of October slipped by we began to believe that we would wait another month before we might hear something. After all, in this process one tends to try not to get their hopes up. We had been told we could wait as long as 2 years (we only applied 10 months ago & submitted our paperwork to Albania 5.5 months ago). We were also told that we would probably get a boy, and it would be rare for us to be referred one under the age of 2 (we were advised in our application to raise our age limit to 30 months). What ended up happening? We were assigned a girl who has not yet even turned 16 months! After reading that perhaps you can understand my state of speechlessness even more as Jan (our Bethany liaison) started to share more details with me over the phone about a little girl named Elisona living in Coldwater Orphanage matched to us.

It still seems surreal. I had left a message with Jan to "touch base" as we hadn't been in touch with the Bethany since earlier in the summer. So when she called this morning, I thought it was just to return my message. My first clue that something might be up was when she asked if Nathan was also available. There was a different tone in her voice. I told her Nathan was teaching class. The room started spinning as she said things like "you have a referral" and "it's a girl!" The only thing I specifically remember her saying is, "...and she's young!" Details started to come forth and I grabbed a pen to jot it down (I'll have to save that scrap of paper for her lifebook). I tried to gather my thoughts to ask questions I knew we would want to know. All of a sudden our "imaginary" child suddenly had a face, name, gender, birthday, and address.

As soon as I hung up I reached Nathan on campus via the department secretary and told him to come home as soon as possible! After Nathan got here we kept hitting "Send & Receive" waiting for her photos and documents to come through.

We have now entered the more anxious waiting stage that we've read about in so many books and articles! The top picture above is posted on our fridge, next to my computer monitor, and on the office door. We've studied her eyes and tried to read into them what kind of personality she might have. We don't want to miss any more of her life than we already have. According to her "report" she's already crawling and exhibits some fine motor skills.

So what's next? That's the #1 Question of the day. We have a few documents that we need to sign and get notarized, certified, and apostilled to formally accept our referral and give Bethany power of attorney to petition the judge in Albania for a court date. Those will get sent to Bethany in Michigan which will then send them via DHL to Albania.

From there we will wait for a court date. We're hoping that perhaps a date might be set as soon as early to mid November because we won't be able to bring her home until about 5 weeks after the first court date and we really want to wrap things up before the government offices close down for Christmas and New Year's holidays (which can drag into the middle of January).

One wrinkle in all of this is that she's not in Tirana as we had assumed would be the case. Many of you know that my parents have an apartment near the center of the city which is just a short taxi ride from Bethany's orphanage for 0-3 year olds. Though Ellie was actually born in Tirana, she was placed in an orphanage in Vlora, about 3-4 hours south of Tirana, presumably because that was the first orphanage with an opening available to accept her. The court date will take place in the Vlora district and she will not be able to leave the orphanage until our 15-day waiting period transpires. Meanwhile we will have visitation during that time period but will need to find a place to stay in Vlora for those two weeks. Bethany-Albania has never handled an adoption out of this orphanage before and doesn't really have any precedent to go by. Fortunately we have lots of Albanian friends and we're sure many of them will have lodging suggestions.

How will this work with Nathan's teaching responsibilities and the ministry of the student center? Assuming we will travel in the next 6 weeks or so, Nathan and I will travel over together for the first court date and he will stay about a week before returning to Kentucky to finish out the semester. I will stay in Albania with Ellie and am so glad to have the help of my parents who already planned to be in Albania until December 18 to run Planters' ministry. If it appears that we (Cydil & Ellie) cannot come home before the 18th, Nathan will fly back over to Albania until everything is wrapped up (passports, visas, medical exams, etc. procured) as the College will be on break until mid-January (and we should most definitely be done with everything by then)!

We want to praise the Lord for answered prayers and provision. There have been so many evidences of His hand in this situation. It's amazing and awesome. We are grateful for your interest and participation with us in this experience, especially through your prayers. We will share more later so please check back to this blog often!