What Are We Waiting For?

We are waiting for court. We are waiting for news that Lyle needs to go to Ethiopia by himself to stand before a judge and be told that we can be Mihret's parents.

It is approximately 4-5 months post referral that parents will attend court. We received our referral in March so court could be July or August.

You generally get 3-5 weeks notice of court. So we could be assigned a court date any day.

However, if we don't get a court date assigned very quickly now, we will have to wait through court closures, which occur for August and September. (Wouldn't it be weird if our courts closed for two months to celebrate New Years?!)

That means we need to be assigned our court date right away to fall into the timeline of traveling in 3-5 weeks before the closure occurs.  Only July works because in August they're usually closed.

Our second choice is to be assigned a court date ASAP so that it happens right after courts open in October. If not, we have to wait for courts to open and then be assigned a date for another 3-5 weeks after that.

Travel for pick up occurs 4-5 months post court. If we get a July court date, we could possibly bring Mihret home for Christmas. If we get an October court date that could possibly mean pick up in February or March. And so on and so forth. You can do the math from there.

So, let's all pray for a court date to be assigned ASAP!

*The time estimates have been provided by CAFAC, however, they are all best case time frames. Sometimes paper work glitches, bureaucracy etc can cause further delays.