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!