Adoption Update

Tuesday was our appointment at the US Embassy here in Nairobi to have our I-600 notarized. We left the house around 12pm for our 1pm appointment. It's about a 10 mile drive so we thought that would be plenty of time to get there. Little did we know there is a petrol shortage in Kenya that is causing h.o.r.r.i.b.l.e. traffic. We got there and through security after 2pm for our 1pm appointment. We did call while we were in standstill traffic, and let them know we weren't going to make it by 1pm. They seemed fine with it. When we made it to the consular services office we found out why. We didn't really have an appointment. You just take a number and wait your turn. Agh. Anyway...

We waited for our turn and took our document in to the little office where they serve you. We gave her our paperwork, and the lady says to us, "I think I know you guys." It was a Kenyan lady. We were like, "Oh no, is that good or bad?" She says, "You're the ones adopting from Addis." Apparently we're famous. :) So, she told us to go pay and come back. Which we did. Then she told us to go back to the waiting room to wait for the notary to come. So, we waited some more. Meanwhile, we met a missionary couple in the waiting room. Had a nice chat with them and they gave us some info about adopting from Kenya. But more on that later. After waiting some more, we were called to a window to sign in front of the notary. However, upon looking at our document, I see white out!! If you know anything about adoptions, you don't take your chances on using white out. No one wants to see white out on an official document! I think I just about flipped out. No way were we paying $50 for the notarization and another $50 to FedEx it to Addis for them to tell us to do it again! She went to see if she could find the last page so we would have a new one of those, but they had already put a thing to hold it together in the corner, so I had to fill out the entire thing again. It wasn't a problem. I just thought it was kind of crazy the Embassy thought that would fly.

So, we finally got to sign our document and leave. It was about a 2 hour process. With Dinah, John, and Ruth in tow. I carried along some Brain Quest books so that kept them busy for a while. They really did pretty good. We were "practicing" for our Embassy appointment in Addis when we will have all four kids with us!

After leaving the Embassy, we stopped in the FedEx store to mail the document to Addis. There was one in the shopping center right by the Embassy where we had parked. Praise the Lord that part was easy! We went in and she asked for the address which we had. But then she asked for a phone number in Addis. Agghh! No one told us we would need a phone number. Thankfully it's not too expensive to call the US now so Nathan called his dad who got on the internet and found the number for CWA. Except 1-800 numbers don't work when you are outside the US. :) We finally got a number that wasn't a 1-800 and got through to CWA and got the number for Addis. We were told it would arrive today. I suppose we should track it and see if it arrived yet.

We left FedEx and started toward home. We didn't get far and realized traffic had not cleared up at all. So Nathan pulled out the map and found a way to get around some of it. We did hit some traffic. And by that point we were exhausted. We made a pit stop to get some quick dinner and then sat in traffic for a bit more before finally getting home close to 7pm. It was a long day, and our kids did super! We are thankful to have that done and out of the way! Now we hurry up and wait some more since Ezra's birth certificate still hasn't been issued!

Please continue to pray for his birth certificate! That is the one piece of paperwork that is holding everything up at this point. When Wednesday evening comes and there is no news, it's kind of depressing. We really want to go get Ezra soon!!