Feeling a bit down......

I think anyone who has adopted before has reached the point that I am at right now.  I am just sad and frustrated.  Tomorrow marks 11 weeks of waiting for a referral.  I guess the power has been out in Ethiopia (a very vague excuse I know) and our agency has received zero referrals for 2 weeks now.  We are still 6th in line.  Our case manager says that there are boy referrals that they know of, but with no power, things are at a stand still.  I am hoping that we will get a good bump to the front once the power situation is worked out.  In some ways, no referral at this point isn't what is bugging me the most.  It is the fact that the wait just keeps getting longer.  We just found out Friday that the wait from passing court until travel is 8 to 10 weeks now.  8 TO 10 WEEKS!  It use to be 2 to 4 weeks.  But, new regulations regarding birth certificates has extended things.  The wait from referral to submitting our documents to court is longer also.  The more popular Ethiopia becomes, the more regulations we are seeing.  Of course I want things to be ran as ethically as possible, but part of the reason we chose Ethiopia was because of a relatively quick process in an adoption friendly country.  I am disappointed that Ethiopia is falling prey to all the red tape we see in other countries.

So, our time line will look something like this from referral (to my understanding):  After we accept our referral it will take 2 to 3 months to submit our documents to court.  A court date will then be set 6 to 8 weeks out.  We have a 5o/50 shot of passing court the first time.  If we do not pass court, depending on the problem, it could take 2 to 6 weeks to get another court date.  After we pass court we will travel for pick up approximately 8 to 10 weeks later.  This puts our process taking from 22 to 36 weeks after we accept a referral.  So let's say we get a referral at the end of June, that would put us traveling for pick up anywhere from late November (if things go as fast as they can and we pass court on the first try) to mid February.  **Sigh**  My brain says "God is in control," but my heart is not listening to my brain......

Julie