I immediately emailed Lisa at our adoption agency letting her know that we had approval from Homeland Security. Of course the thing on my mind was what’s next, and how long before our dossier gets to Ethiopia, how soon can we get a referral and how soon can we bring our son home. She gave the following approximate time line:
Once I get our I171H and our Power of Attorney forms state authenticated (should be by tomorrow) I’ll send them to her and then our file will be sent to the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington, DC for all paperwork to be authenticated. This usually takes between 2-3 weeks. Then we’ll receive an email from Dove giving us a DHL tracking number that we can use to track our dossier as it travels around the world. It usually takes 2-3 days, but sometimes takes 5 if it goes through Berlin, to get to Ethiopia. Then one copy of our dossier goes to the orphanage so they can start working on a referral, one goes to our attorney working in Ethiopia on our behalf and the third one goes to the Ethiopian government so they can start on all the legal paperwork stuff.
I was anxious to see when we might receive a referral and Lisa said based on our criteria we could possibly be waiting up to six months. So then my next question was so how long after receiving, and accepting, a referral could it be before we get through the courts and go to Ethiopia to pick up our son. Lisa said they had another family on a similar time line to ours last year and they traveled in January. The big slow-down with the courts is the rainy season. They shut down the government offices when the rains come and people have difficulty traveling on roads that have been washed away. The courts can be closed for 6-12 weeks.
It was my goal to have our son home by Christmas, but it looks as if it’s probably going to be closer to the end of January sometime. 
That’s a bummer. We’ll be ready for him no matter when he comes home. I’m hoping and praying that we get lucky with the process and make it home before Christmas though.