we passed....but still more waiting...

Hey everyone!

Thanks so much for all of your prayers last week as we had our court date. As many of you know, we did pass court, and Olive is our baby now! This makes me so excited....
However, there is a letter needed from MOWA (Ministry of Women's Affairs) in Ethiopia. This is the organization that oversees all of the Ethiopian adoptions. They give a letter to the court for each case, and at this point the judge gives his final declaration, and our case is closed. Usually this letter is there for the court date, but MOWA has been really behind lately. The court case still happened without this letter, but the judge passed us pending the arrival of the letter. We found out yesterday that as of today, MOWA is closed for 2 weeks for training purposes. The judge has already issued a summons for the letter we are waiting on, but the letter wasn't done before the closure.
We are unsure how long this will delay our case. Our agency expects that our case will be closed in 2-3 weeks, and from there we can get travel dates, etc...they expect that we will beat the rainy season. We are praying hard that we do beat the rainy season. It usually lasts from August to sometime in September. Please keep us in your prayers over these next few weeks...it's going to be hard waiting, but I know God already knows what will happen, and He has this under control!
I am sure that you can all understand why I wasn't jumping up and down excited to share the news, since the letter wasn't there yet. I am still thrilled, it is a relief to know that she is ours now, but I have a sort of cautious excitement not having the letter there and the case 100% confirmed.

Thanks again for all your support!
Love,
Natalie, Michael, Ender and Olive