Embassy Date

We have an embassy date of June 16th! We will arrive June 14th and have our Gotcha Day. We will spend a few days enjoying Ethiopia with the kids, have our embassy day on the 16th, get their visas on the 17th and leave the evening of the 18th.

We will fly 17 hours and land in DC Sunday morning. We will be in NC around 6:00 pm

We are CLEARED FOR TRAVEL!!!!!

We got the call this morning that we are cleared for Embassy! Less than 24 hours after we stepped out on faith and bought our plane tickets He opened the door and cleared us! Praise God! He really is amazing!

We leave on June 13 and our embassy appointment will be that week ( we should find out Monday what the actual date is.)

We will be back in Greensboro at 5:55 on Sunday June 19th. ( united flight 5690)... Father's Day. :) Anyone close by that would like to meet us at the airport is more than welcome to come meet the newest Mullis kids! :)

Isaiah 43: 1-2

Fear not, for I have redeemed you,

I have summoned you by name; you are mine.

When you pass through the waters,

I will be with you ;

And when you pass through the rivers,

They will not sweep over you.

When you walk through the fire,

You will not be burned;

The flames will not set you ablaze.

For I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel , your Saviour.

Stepping out of the boat

After finding out that we needed more paperwork for embassy on Friday and pretty much reeling with the news all weekend ( seriously, Lord? Can't at least one part of this go smooth?) We made the decision to go ahead and make our plane reservations for June 12th -19th. We decided that it was time. Our kids have been over there waiting since meeting us in January and its just time. We decided that we would go on faith that God would provide the embassy appointment we need, when we need it.

Greg will fly home on June 19th and hopefully we will all be with him, but if the kids have not gotten their Visas, I will stay with them until they are cleared for travel. It may be another week or just a few days, but regardless they will have their mommy and daddy there in Ethiopia on June 14th for Gotcha Day.

I have had total peace about this... in spite of our agency giving us a worse case scenario ( stuck in country for longer) I still think we need to go. Greg does too and last night I began preparing a list of items needed for additional time in ET, thinking of ways to keep the kids entertained as we wait on embassy, imagining in my mind getting through a 17 hour flight and customs alone. I woke up feeling like, with God's help I can be brave and for the kids, I can do this. We called grandparents and airlines this morning and began planning to leave the 12th.

My phone rings around 11 and it is AWAA and I am thinking to myself they have gotten the email telling them we are going no matter what and here comes round 2 of worse case trying to talk me out of it. Instead she says, "Your family must have been praying hard last night because the document that should have taken until June 8th to be submitted was actually submitted last night!"

It is a faxed copy of it, but the original is on its way back to the city . Hopefully embassy will take the faxed copy and clear us tonight (PLEASE PRAY THEY DO!!) but either way the document is found and on its way to Addis so they can submit the original if need be! Please pray it is also what embassy needs to clear Micah. Sarah Faith is good it is just one document for Micah they are requesting.

Now, we still haven't cleared and we still don't have an embassy date, but the fact that the Lord allowed the document to be submitted a full week ahead of time is a big deal to me! We are still leaving on the 12th cleared or not, embassy date or not, but I am hoping and praying the Lord will allow us ( and our kids) to know we are cleared and with a solid date by the time we leave on 6/12/11.

If so, we will arrive home on June 19th on Father's Day. How cool is that!? Greg would have all 5 of his kids together for Father's Day and my dad and his dad will be at the airport to meet us. The first time we have all ever been together on Father's Day.

Stepping out of the boat is not an easy thing for me to do, but with God in charge we feel like it is the right thing to do.

Embassy News

So we were hoping and praying that Friday was THE day we would clear Embassy. Well, instead I got an email saying that the Embassy wants more documentation on Micah. ( insert very large SIGH here)

Our agency thinks they have what embassy needs and are going to take it to them Tuesday when they open ( Blast you national holidays!) If so, they should clear us and we should get a date to leave in the next week or two. IF it is not enough then our agency will have to send someone to the region Micah is from to collect the document and since this will be on African time it could take a few weeks.

PLEASE PRAY with us that embassy will accepts AW documents and go ahead and clear us. I know a few weeks is not that long in the scheme of things, but my heart is breaking as Micah has had to wait since January for us to come back and so many of his friends have left the TH to be with their forever families and still he waits. It is hard for me to understand, I cant imagine how hard it is on a 10 year old little boy. And Miss Sarah Faith is growing like a weed and I am MISSING IT! She is 7 months now...I SOOOO want her home by her 8th month birthday.

I'll post what we hear back on Tuesday in the mean time THANK YOU for your prayers!

EMBASSY!!

We were submitted to EMBASSY today!!! Whooooo Hooooo! What this means is that AW was able to collect all our post court paperwork and they took it to the US Embassy in Ethiopia. The Embassy has 10 days to look it over and either clear us, request more information or do an investigation. There were families last week that were submitted on Wednesday and cleared on Monday! SOOO we could very well be looking at flying to Ethiopia by next weekend! Oh MY GOODNESS!!!!!! Please pray there will be no hangups and we will clear Embassy with no problem!

Here are some pictures of Micah and Sarah Faith that I havent shown on the blog before. I can not begin to tell you how much I am looking forward to loving on these kids SOON!

So whats next.(.when do we go get them??!!)

A lot of people have asked us what is next with the adoption and when do we get to go get them.

Now that we have passed court ( I have to pinch myself that I actually get to write that!) we are waiting for the staff in Ethiopia to gather all the post court documents which include passports, birth certificates, health examinations and other things.

Once that is all completed they will take our documents to the US Embsaay. They can only submit documents on Wednesdays so whatever the next Wednesday it is they will submit us. (We are hoping this is next week May 18th)

The embassy take about a week to let you know that 1.) you are clear or 2.) we need to investigate a little more into your particular case and make sure everything is ok.

If we hear that we are cleared we can go ahead and book our flights. we will need to be in country about a week, but we get to go get the kids and bring them to the Guest House with us the very first day!

I will keep you posted, but we are really hoping and praying that we can leave the week of May 30th...but we will see.

Here is our latest update from AWAA. Love these babies!!