We are on THE LIST!

The Gordons are celebrating an adoption milestone!! Our dossier made it back safely to our agency from DC, complete with authentication from both the US and Ethiopian embassies!! We are now officially a waiting family eligible to receive a referral for our sweet Max! Officially, our waitlist number is.....



Edited: When we got home, I glanced at the MSU jersey hanging in Murphy's room that he'll share with Max, and guess what number it is...89, of course! :) I had to add it to the post! We'll keep the Bears jersey too though!

After obsessively checking my email for days, I resigned myself to the fact that the message wouldn't come until next week because our consultant, who only works part-time, is off on Fridays. Wes actually called me so happy, and I didn't have a clue what he was talking about! The good-news email came from another CHI consultant about 20 minutes earlier, and after being so impatient, I had missed it. ha! I'm actually glad Wes was the one to tell me though! :)

So now what? Now, quite simply, we wait for an undetermined amount of time. As is to be expected, everyone's next question is inevitably, "How long?" We really don't know! Last week, four families received referrals for boys (3-15 months old), and all waited nearly 10 months from the time the were on THE LIST. We are preparing ourselves for 12-18 months of waiting to be matched, and then it will be several months before we travel to meet him and then travel again to bring Max home.

According to the ticker on the right, we are five months, one week and one day into our adoption journey. Only the Lord knows how many more months we will wait, but we trust in Him!

Our agency puts all waiting families on one list, whether they are requesting boy, girl, either gender, or siblings, and no matter what age parameters they are requesting (infant or older child). Thankfully, we won't necessarily have to reach #1 on the list to get our referral....for example, just last week, the family that was #18 on the list received a referral for a little boy because the first 17 families on the list are (from my estimation) waiting for siblings, a girl or a younger infant boy. [Is it bad that I want to automatically subtract 17 spots from our number??! :)] Also, people can change their parameters (say, from siblings to one child), which also affects the list.

Every time a child is matched with a family we move down this list, so we rejoice with all the new families, both for the children and the parents, and for ourselves.

Also, just to clarify, we are NOT "waiting" for children to become orphans....there are an estimated 5 million orphans in Ethiopia, which is less than twice the size of Texas. We are waiting for children to become adoptable (lots of paperwork involved in a place that doesn't move at an American pace!) and to become eligible to be matched with a family through the orphanages our agency works with.

I hope all this makes sense! I'll try to explain it all more as we move further down the list.

We ask for your continued prayers, not only for us as Max's forever family, but most certainly for his first family and for the woman who will give him life and then have to give him up. My heart already aches for her and the circumstances she will endure. Adoption is born out of tragedy, but we know the Lord will make beauty from the ashes. For that, we are so thankful!