It's Official! We passed court!

On Friday, August 26, 2011 our agency was informed that the Hebert family file has been approved and has passed court.  Here's the e-mail we received Saturday morning,

"You DID pass court. Now the next step is to use the decree to apply for a new birth certificate. There are several steps before the case can be presented to the Embassy, but things are moving. Congratulations and have a great weekend. Merrily"

Now we can finally share with everyone our precious son as he is now legally our son! The Ethiopian courts have issued our adoption decree and all that is left to do now is wait for the new birth certificate that has our names as his legal parents and once we have that in our file, then our file is submitted to the US Embassy in Addis Ababa, we then wait for embassy to clear us for travel to bring Abraham home forever!

So here is the official announcement on this blog:

INTRODUCING ABRAHAM HEBERT

Watch Abraham lead in song!!!

http://vimeo.com/27435841

Back from our Court date

We made it home safe and sound.  I have a cold but other than that we both had a pretty good trip with no awful effects. Well I had one night of tummy issues..no fun...tried eating fish there, not a good idea!

 

So the update is:

 

We didn't pass court due to no MOWA letter.  MOWA is the Ministry of Women's Affairs in Ethiopia, they handle all adoption cases. They have to have a letter of approval for the judge to have in each parents files. If there is no MOWA letter, then the judge cannot sign the adoption decree.  MOWA is at least 2 weeks behind on letters and are still processing letters for court cases done back in June.  There are many stories circulating and we haven't a clue what to believe, but we're hoping that because our court case was done before court closures which start Aug 6th, that we will still get our MOWA letter and that the clerks will get our file ready to submit to embassy. Here's hoping and praying!

 

So as of right now we are just in wait mode once again. Once we pass court then the US embassy will get our file and hopefully embassy doesn't find anything in our file that they feel the need to investigate more, which is something that is happening frequently right now. This is offensive to the Ethiopian courts as basically the message is, "Ethiopian judges decisions aren't good enough for the US and so we must do our own investigation."

It's quite the uproar!

 

So please pray with us that we pass court soon so that embassy will all that more quicker and we can bring our son home.

 

As of right now, he's still not officially 'ours' until we get that judges signature.

 

Abraham cried so much the day we left. He was in my arms bawling and sobbing.  This wait is hard on our son. It's hard on all of us...but I kept telling him over and over, "be patient, we are coming back for you. We love you son...."

 

Thank you for thinking of us and praying for us and for those who checked in on our 4 kids at home. The kids did great and are to be praised for being such responsible children.

 

Will let everyone know when we pass court!

 

In Christ,

Jeff and Donna