Adopting Our Ethiopian Princess
Donation protected
Hi all- we are John and Tara Autumn. In 2011 we adopted a wonderful little boy, Samuel, from Ethiopia with what turned out to be some pretty significant special needs- untreated bilateral club foot and microcephaly/ cytomegla virus. Of course we were told that a simple single operation would fix him. Not the case. After casting and surgeries on his legs, he is now thriving. Our little boy, Sam, has enhanced our lives so much. We have grown more and more invested in older child adoption.
During the process we fell in love with Ethiopia and sought out local Ethiopian families here in South Carolina to keep cultural connections for our son. We deeply believe in older child, special needs adoption. We visited several special needs care centers including AHOPE which is specifically for HIV positive children and also spent a great deal of time with many disabled children at the Missionaries of Charity center. In early 2012 we were sent information on Sam's sister- a little girl who is 6 years old who was in a very unfortunate situation of being raised in a child-headed household. She has been in care for over a year and a half and even though our process has been prolonged and hit some road bumps, we are ready to bring her home.
We finally had our court date on April 12. We have passed court and all pertinent documents were sent to the US Embassy . Soon I will go back to welcome her into our family and travel back from Ethiopia with our new girl. A major goal is for us to raise enough money to bring our sons to Ethiopia, as well. We also need to raise extra funds to pay for me or John to visit her home region.
Two trips- from American to Ethiopia is very expensive and although we have worked hard to raise over half so far. The company John was working for became unstable and has a very large scale lay off. This caused John to need to switch companies (thankfully finding a new job pretty quick). However, this transition cost him several weeks of pay and he has no accrued vacation time. We were sad to have these set-backs delay our adoption and prevent him from coming to the court date. Please help us bring this beautiful little girl home!! We know that once we finally get her back to her new home the real work begins. We are not able to show her photo a public forum such as the internet. Thanks so much for thinking of our girl and the millions of children affected by the AIDS crisis in Africa.
During the process we fell in love with Ethiopia and sought out local Ethiopian families here in South Carolina to keep cultural connections for our son. We deeply believe in older child, special needs adoption. We visited several special needs care centers including AHOPE which is specifically for HIV positive children and also spent a great deal of time with many disabled children at the Missionaries of Charity center. In early 2012 we were sent information on Sam's sister- a little girl who is 6 years old who was in a very unfortunate situation of being raised in a child-headed household. She has been in care for over a year and a half and even though our process has been prolonged and hit some road bumps, we are ready to bring her home.
We finally had our court date on April 12. We have passed court and all pertinent documents were sent to the US Embassy . Soon I will go back to welcome her into our family and travel back from Ethiopia with our new girl. A major goal is for us to raise enough money to bring our sons to Ethiopia, as well. We also need to raise extra funds to pay for me or John to visit her home region.
Two trips- from American to Ethiopia is very expensive and although we have worked hard to raise over half so far. The company John was working for became unstable and has a very large scale lay off. This caused John to need to switch companies (thankfully finding a new job pretty quick). However, this transition cost him several weeks of pay and he has no accrued vacation time. We were sad to have these set-backs delay our adoption and prevent him from coming to the court date. Please help us bring this beautiful little girl home!! We know that once we finally get her back to her new home the real work begins. We are not able to show her photo a public forum such as the internet. Thanks so much for thinking of our girl and the millions of children affected by the AIDS crisis in Africa.
Organizer
Tara Autumn Perkins
Organizer
Columbia, SC
