We spent 2 days site seeing in London on the way to Ethiopia to pick up our little girl  Details .

See video clip here of pictures.

I'm thankful and blessed to be back in the USA.

To see about our travel, look at Our Ethiopia Trip

Not only must one go back to the year 2000 to enter Ethiopia, as they are on the coptic calendar which is 8 years behind the US.. They failed to convert to the Georgian Calendar when the rest of the world did and remained on the old Coptic or Alexandarian Calendar.

Much of the statistics of the time mirror the US of about 100 years ago or roughly 1906 from some things i've seen.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/et.html

The avg. age is 18, and the life expancy is around 49 years of age.  The avg wage is close to $100, and 40% are below the poveryt level.  There is no speed limits but who has a car. For a country of 79M only 164K have access to the internet, and only 725K have a land line phone, and only 866K have a mobile phone (ok i'm a geek).

If you look at old stats in the US for the year 1906:

• The average life expectancy  was 47 years
• Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.
• Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone
• There were only 8,000 cars   and only 144 miles  of paved roads.
  
• The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
  
• The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower!
  
• The average  worker made between $200 and $400 per year 

Not that far of from Ethiopia in some ways.

We are just days way from travel, but still having trouble getting airline tickets.  We keep getting wait-listed.

Here is a picture taken on 7-20-2008.  Isn't she beautiful.

Today we received word that we passed court in Ethiopia.  If you didn't know we've been trying to adopt for some time now, and it is a long arduous journey.

By passing court this means that legally in Ethiopia, “Sarah Meskerem Miller” is now officially our child.

We now are free to post pictures (we were prohibited before), so I’ve included one.

We will have another home visit and likely a travel meeting  next week to setup our trip to bring her home.

We now will get a US embassy appointment in Ethiopia.  We’ll then travel there to bring her to that meeting where she’ll get a medical and start the process of obtaining a  visa and passport  to enter the US.

Typically the appointment is in about 3 weeks from court approval.  And 2 to 3 days from the embassy appointment we’ll get a visa and passport to bring her home.

We are grateful for your prayers and support.  We now ask for continued prayer in travel planning and the remaining process to go smoothly.

Here is a photo of Sarah who was born on 10-23-2007  (U.S.A calendar).

Psalm 127:3a (NAS)  Behold, ^(F)children are a gift of the LORD,