"Your contract has been approved. He is yours."

Those are the words the judge spoke at our court hearing on April 20th. Bedilu is ours!

Just a quick note to let you all know that we passed our court date. It was unexpected, as we tried to prepare for the worst and expected more delays. In December, 16 families from our agency appeared for their court date and only one passed on the first try. So we were thrilled to get through on the first pass. Now we wait for our Embassy date, when we will return to bring him home. Not sure what that timeline will be, but it could be late summer.

Bekah and I returned to California on Friday after a whirlwind two weeks in Ethiopia. The first week was dedicated to "business." We arrived on a Saturday, were given our week's itinerary and learned that we would be meeting Bedilu on Sunday. Our court date was that Wednesday. The whole experience has been rather intense, and we'll get into more of all that in another post. For now, I just wanted to give the quick update with the good news.

The second week of our trip was spent traveling around the north of Ethiopia, visiting a couple of sites on the "historical circuit." We also did a few days trekking across the highlands near Lalibela, where we got to see how most people outside of the major cities live. We've got a ton of photos and we'll share a few after we get a chance to pick the best of the hundreds we took.

We love Ethiopia and are thrilled to have had the opportunity to get to know its people, culture, landscape, and history while we were there. That said, it is SOOOO good to be back home! We missed our home, our cats, our bed, the great food, fresh produce, dairy products, the weather, my bike, and of course our friends and family.

Thanks again to everyone for your interest and support!