July 12 and 13

On the afternoon of Sunday, July 12 we received an email from someone letting us know about the possible bankruptcy of our adoption agency. To say we were shocked is a major understatement. We were told that because of the situation, we should be prepared to travel early and perhaps one of us count on staying longer than we expected. Because the transition home where Denver was staying was run by our agency, we were unsure how long they would be staying open. I can’t even begin to tell you how devastating this was for us. It was such a shock as we had absolutely no idea, no warning, no indicators at all that our agency was in trouble.

At this point, we weren’t even supposed to have found out about the bankruptcy but knowing the position we were in, having been through court making Denver officially our son, this person was kind enough to inform us of the situation.

I spent pretty much all of Monday on the phone trying to figure things out. Slowly the news was leaking out and the adoption community was becoming aware of the situation. Two moms of Ethiopian children – one that had just arrived home from Addis and one that was still there – sent emails out to everyone saying that if we were through court and had children in the transition home in Addis, that we should get over there as soon as possible. Apparently there was no money coming in anymore and there was only a few days worth of food left for the children. Yikes. I may have been a little stressed at this point.

You may be wondering why the decision to travel or not was so tough for me so I’ll explain. At this point, Denver was legally our son. We had his court documents, his passport and his birth certificate. However these documents were all at the High Commission in Nairobi and we were waiting for them to issue Denver’s facilitation visa so we could get him home to Canada. This process was taking approximately 12 weeks (give or take) and we were at week five. Our agency has a strict policy that you are not allowed to travel prior to this visa being issued. The concern is always about messing things up for those in the process behind us. However, at this point, we figured there wouldn’t be anyone behind us due to the bankruptcy of our agency. The other issue was that I would probably have to stay in Ethiopia for seven weeks (give or take) waiting for Nairobi to issue Denver’s visa before I could take him home. Having three children and a husband at home – that wouldn’t have been easy.

We also put a call in to our MP’s office and stopped by in the early afternoon on Monday to give them every single piece of paperwork we had. The woman at the office (we’ll call her “C”) did so much work for us already that first day. Even though she said she was only working until 3:00 pm at the latest that day, she was still calling us past 5:30. She is an amazing woman and we will forever be thankful for everything she did for us.

So we continued to think and pray about what to do. I called a travel agent and put a flight on hold for the next day just in case. This also wasn’t easy because I didn’t know what my return date was. To leave a ticket open ended is a huge cost (approximately eleven thousand dollars) so we just picked a date - the soonest possible day we could get for a reasonable price - with the plan to change it (a cost of $200.00 to change it and then pay the difference if the new flight cost more). When the travel agent called me back with the details, I realized that I forgot to tell her that I was coming home with a baby. Oops – minor detail! I clearly had way too much going on in my head.

Around dinnertime an official bankruptcy notice was posted on our agency’s website. We put together an email to inform family and friends of the situation and to ask for prayer – specifically for Denver’s health and safety as well as for us as we had some major decisions to make.