How so quick?

Some may be wondering how we got a referral so quick? Are they legitimately orphans? Are they buying orphans? Those are legitimate questions. Often times if you are with an agency that gives quick referrals that can mean that the agency is doing some immoral things. Many people are waiting years for a referral from Ethiopia... and we waited 3 weeks. The original agency we were with (for like 2 days) we found out some scary things & they pretty much were buying & selling children. Thankfully an amazing women contacted me with some important information on that agency the same day we sent out our application fee & we were able to get it back in time without losing any money or getting in deep with this immoral agency. But then we found our amazing agency West Sands Adoptions who we love! They are a very moral agency & well respected in Ethiopia. They are a smaller agency (though growing very quickly) so still have a shorter wait time than some agencies but again that is growing increasing the wait time. Many people I believe saw that they had a shorter wait time & joined their agency expanding the waiting list very quickly in the last 6 months.

Anyways, back to our referral. Right now I believe our agency has a 12-18 month wait time for a healthy referral. For an HIV referral they are predicting 6-9 months. They had just told us 4-8 months for our referral since we were open to 1 or 2 children with HIV up to 4 years old. So we weren't expecting to hear anything until this summer or fall. So how did we get a referral in 3 weeks? Well we were 104 on the healthy list & 11 on the HIV list. Apparently no one else on the HIV list was open to siblings (except for 1 family requesting 2 boys) so even though we were last on the list we were the only ones that fit this referral so it went to us. It is possible that they contacted others on the list above us to confirm they weren't open to 2 before contacting us but I don't know. Yes our girls were orphans. They didn't traffic them or buy them. They were abandoned at 5 days old. They were taken to the hospital that same day & then taken to our agency's transition home once they were released from the hospital a few weeks later.

This was all a HUGE surprise to us but God knew exactly what he was doing! I believe he was waiting for us to let go of this adoption & what we “wanted” & be open to what he wanted. Remember, we were originally requesting a healthy infant, then an infant with HIV & then opened up to any age up to 4 years old. It was just a week or 2 after we opened up that we got THE CALL. We ended up with TWO infants. He just wanted us to LET GO & allow him to take control. I have NO doubt that this was what he wanted. How else could we raise over $10,000 in 4 days??? If this wasn't God's plan I don't believe that would have been possible.

Here's a sneak peak of our little girls!  We can't show full pictures until we pass court in 2-3 months.