Please Pray for Ethiopian Adoptions!!

I copied this from a fellow adoptive mom's Facebook page:

There are important meetings taking place in Ethiopia this week that could dramatically affect the future of adoptions there. MOWA (Ministry of Womens and Childrens Affairs) is the governing body of adoption in Ethiopia. Before the Ethiopian courts will grant custody to the adopting family, a recommendation letter is required from MOWA. MOWA has been understaffed for quite some time, and some families have had several delays in their court dates due to the MOWA letter not being available. It has been reported that MOWA generates approximately 50 letters per day. They are proposing that in order to combat alleged corruption in the Ethiopian adoption system, they must drastically cut the number of cases they deal with in order to have more time to properly investigate each situation and guarantee that the child is being adopted for all the right reasons. The proposed cuts are up to 90%!

This, obviously, would have adverse affects on many, many children. There are more than 4 million orphaned children in Ethiopia, alone. It takes a great deal of effort and paperwork for each child to be officially declared adoptable; but these proposed changes would create a huge bottleneck in their current system. The children in the majority of the orphanages are loved, but live in unspeakable conditions. There are thousands of orphans with health conditions that cannot be addressed unless they are adopted. And there are many, many good, loving families waiting with open arms to love these children as their own.

Please take a moment this week and lift up these important discussions in Ethiopia, pray for the families in the process of adopting or just beginning to adopt, and most importantly, pray for the children of Ethiopia. We serve a good, faithful and loving God, and we know He holds this situation in his hands. He will hear our voices if we cry out to him. Thank you, my friends.


For more information, check out this article:
http://blog.beliefnet.com/redletters/2011/03/ethiopias-plan-to-cut-adoptions-a-prayerful-response.html