More Changes

This post covers a few different subjects. First of all the background change in honor of St. Patrick's day that is soon approaching. My great grandfather was 100% Irish (Thomas McKee) so I must have a wee bit of Irish blood pumping though my body. And the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame are my favorite college football team...so those are my connections to St. Patrick's day and I am going to claim them for some reason to celebrate.


The second involves our adoption. If you have ever adopted from another country you know never get comfortable with what you think is the policy because it will change. I am going to paste the latest news we received from our agency today.

Dear Ronald & Bliss,

The Consulate in Addis Ababa held a meeting today for all adoption agency representatives. At this meeting the Consulate informed adoption agencies of a some changes that they will be implementing in the next few weeks.

The first change is that adoption agencies will no longer have a weekly Consulate appointment day. Due to limited staff at the Consulate each agency will now have a Consulate appointment day every other week. This means that agencies can only have families travel every other week to obtain visas for their children. This change will become effective April 1st.

The second change is that the Consulate will now require TB testing for all children along with the Consulate medical prior to issuing a visa. The Consulate medical is completed after court but prior to the family appearing at the Consulate for their child’s visa interview. This new requirement could potentially increase the number of days needed between court approval and travel dates. This change will become effective March 23rd.

In light of these changes, America World will likely need to alter tentative travel dates by a week to three weeks for some families. As this announcement was just made several hours ago in Ethiopia, we will need more time (potentially another week or two weeks) before we know the full impact of these changes and how this could affect your travel timeline.

I would ask you to please hold questions at this time. As we learn more about the effects of these changes they will be shared with your family and if needed we will arrange a conference call to discuss further.

We are committed to do everything we can to unite your family with your child as soon as possible. I know this news can be unsettling as you long to be with your child. We are praying for your family and will let you know as soon as we have any additional information or new tentative travel dates.

Sincerely,

Anna M. Graham
Director of Programs

So welcome to our world of international adoption. As you can see from my ticker we are 18 nearly 17 days away from our court date. We have been assigned TTD that are now extreme TTD as we have no idea what these new changes will mean as far as our travel. All we can ask you to do is pray...we trust God's perfect timing will unite us with our beautiful M*** just as he has planned.

Blessings,
Bliss