Overview of our Ethiopian adoption journey thus far

I wanted to start this blog by thanking all of you bloggers out there for helping me get through this anxiety of waiting for a court date in Ethiopia. I am not the most computer literate but once I found all of you... I have been following your journeys to get some idea of what is going on out there. Thank you so much.
My husband and I have two children living with us now... a daughter Jordyn who is 11 and a son Ayden who is almost 4... and more on the way from Ethiopia. I will take pictures and get them on here this weekend.
In June of 2003, my husband and I met Mr. Norm Perdue, founder of COEEF (Children of Ethiopia Education Fund) and began sponsoring a child in Ethiopia to go school. My mother had been sponsoring two children and my daughter Jordyn was writing letters to one, (Mahider) and my niece was writing letters to the other (Martha). My mother had invited us to a 'sponsor picnic' and the program was so wonderful and beautiful we signed up to sponsor. The child that we sponsor is Tigisti and she lives in Axum, which is Northern Ethiopia. Tigisti lives with her mother and her father is passed away.
In August of 2006 Norm brought the Mesgana Dancers to the United States for their first tour here and one of the 10 girls that came over was Mahider Ayalew. My husband and I had volunteered to let two of the girls stay with us during their time here and it was awesome! Mahider is one of the two girls that my mother sponsors and we were overjoyed to get to spend time getting to know her. I took the two girls to my 10 year old daughters' school and when I looked at Mahider at one point she had tears streaming down her cheeks. My immediate thought was... "I wish I could let her stay here to go to school." Mahider lives with her grandmother and I wondered about getting her into a school here in the U.S. on a student visa. Mahider returned back to Ethiopia and I began working on getting the school where I live I20 approved so that foreign students could come to it. During that process her mother passed away and I was told that she was now available to be adopted if I wanted to pursue that direction.
Last October I called an agency and began the homestudy process. I flew to Ethiopia in December... talked with MOWA and met the whole family and siblings that I did not know about. They had not lived with the grandmother until the mother passed. We are now awaiting a court date. If we pass court we will be bringing Mahider and her siblings: Fitsum, Bestelot, Hymanot, and Beruk with her. YES, you are reading me correctly... FIVE children.
This journey has definately been a 'Labor of Love' and at times very hard... but as one of my most favorite Ethiopian women, Serkaddis Seifu told me once... "Anything is possible."
I really want to say to anyone and everyone who is adopting from Ethiopia or anywhere... Never give up because it is so true that "anything is possible". There is always a way...
Mahider was here for the 2007 Mesgana tour and you can see her picture at www.mesgana.org. She is so beautiful. As are all of the Ethiopian children!
I am not very computer literate... but I love reading all of the stories out there about these wonderful adoptions and I wanted to put ours out there.
While I was in Ethiopia, I had the opportunity to go to Axum and meet Tigisti. It was an amazing experience that changed my life forever.
Everyone should go... it might change the world.