Day 2

After an amazing night sleep...(bring ear plugs and sleep meds!) I felt like a new woman! Abby had 12 hours of sleep and Greg was the only one that had trouble. He woke up at 2am and went downstairs to the lobby until 4am. He said he read his Bible while listening to the Muslim chants outside. He came back up and slept from 5-8:30

We had breakfast at the guest house and are now waiting to go to the TH at 11:30. Tomorrow we will go to the Transition House in the morning and go to Trees of Glory Carepoint center in the afternoon. It is about 2 hours away from the city and I am looking forward to seeing the African countryside away from the city. I also cant wait to meet our sponsor child, Kiddist. We will spend an hour or two there playing with the kids and passing out fruit, suckers, granola bars and silly bands. Once we get back to the city we are going to a traditional Ethiopian dinner complete with dancing and music.

Two things I forgot to write about yesterday was that we had the Traditional Coffee ceremony where they will roast, grind and brew coffee beans right in front of you. It was REALLY strong coffee, but I loved it. In fact I think it was what kept me upright most of the afternoon! Ethiopia smells like coffee and popcorn ( they serve popcorn with coffee).( I think my mom would like that..two of her favorite smells!)

I was able to Skype with the kids a few minutes last night and they are happy and seem to be doing well. I was glad to talk to them, even if it was kinda sketchy service.

The other thing was about Micah. When we first started talking to him, Greg ask him two different ways to pronounce his Ethiopian name and said which one is it? Micah shook his head and said , "My name is Micah". :)

That was about the only complete sentence he said to us yesterday. He can understand english pretty good and will shake his head yes or no, but he wont talk a lot. I think he is afraid he will say something wrong. He is pretty popular with the other kids and has lots of friends. We brought him a batman yoyo and he knew how to say yoyo and batman! :)

Everyone is so nice. At the guest house and even on the streets, people smile and say hello. The nannies are wonderful with the kids. They give lots of hugs and kisses to the children there.


I will check back in later. Love from Ethiopia!

We made it!!

Greetings from Ethiopia!!! After a mechanical delay in Charlotte that put us an hour off schedule, we arrived in DC at the Ethiopian Air gate with about 20 min to spare. We met another couple, the Jurrens from Minnasota at the airport, so it was cool to see a somewhat familiar face on the plane. We boarded the very nice Boeing 777 and settled in for a long winters nap...NOT!
We had a uneventfull flight but there wasn't a lot of sleep involved. Abby did great and even though I think she was about to go stir crazy she didn't complain. We landed at 7:45am ET time, made it quickly through immigrations and customs. We then met our travel buddies and the driver from AWAA. I am going to try to post about our day, but I am not sure I am making sense ( 33 hours with no sleep will do that to ya!)

Addis Ababa is beautiful! The temps feel a lot like Florida in the winter..comfortable with just a long sleeve shirt. There are lots of people everywhere right now because of a Holiday celebrating the baptism of Jesus. We went to the guest house after the airport, went over our itinerary for the week, unloaded our bags and left again for lunch.
We went to a place called Metro pizza. It was a really nice pizza place and we laughed that our first Ethiopian meal was going to be pizza! :) It was a little bit of Ethiopia mixed throughout because they placed some bread sticks on the table with a little dish of what looked like guacamole. We cautiously dipped our bread in it and WOW! It was soo hot. Totally burnt my mouth! We were all laughing because the Ethiopian kids that were there with us, who were getting ready to go home, were spooning it up like jello! They were loving that hot mess!

The pizza was very good and really cheap, like $4 a person. After we finished up, we loaded in the van and began our trip to the Transition Home. I was going on about 26 hours with no sleep and the overwhelmingness of it all, I felt like I couldn't breathe. It took us forever ( really about 15 min) to finally pull up to that famous America World gate. The other couple was told that there baby would be brought out first. We videoed them seeing their little boy for the first time..he was so sweet.
After a quick switch of camera, it was our turn. They were suppose to be bringing Micah and Sarah Faith out together. There was a long hall they were bringing them down and we were at the porch/front door. As soon as Micah saw us he took off running and threw himself in my arms! That was the sweetest bear hug and I will never forget that feeling. He hugged Greg next and just jumped up onto him to be held. He was so sweet and not shy at all. He was wearing his Florida Gator shirt we had sent him in his care package. He gave Abby a hug and while he was getting acquainted with his big sister, I turned my attention to the sweetest bundle of pink in the nanny's arms. She looked at me with those big brown eyes and didnt cry at all! She just snuggled in like, "Well, I have been waiting for you to get here".

Greg and Micah went over to the playground to play while Abby and I took Sarah Faith up to a couch on the porch to snuggle. And snuggle we did..all afternoon! She would track our eyes really well and smile and coo and she has a bit of thrush and kept sticking her tongue out so I would be able to see it.

We had an amazing amazing day! Tomorrow is more of the same. More good food and more time with the kids. We are so blessed!

Your blog has been hacked!!!

While my sister, Jackie, is heading over the seas to Ethiopia, I will be helping her post some pictures on here. It's been a very long time since I've blogged, so I thought I would try before she left. Cheese!!!!

Ready for Takeoff!!

We are so excited to be leaving on Monday morning Jan, 17th! We leave out of Charlotte at 7:35am for DC and then DC to Addis at noon! We will be in the air 12 hours and 25 min, but we will land in Addis at 8:25 am! We will be 8 hours ahead of our time. According to our travel director ,we will land, get our visa's, check in at the guest house and then go meet our children!!! Wow what a Tuesday that will be!

My sister is going to try to keep my blog up, but I will more than likely be able to update from facebook too.

We will spend the week in Addis doing some shopping and site-seeing in the mornings and then visiting the transition home in the afternoons.

Our court date will be Monday, Jan 24th. This is not a court date to decide if we are good parents ( that was what our home study was for) , but a court hearing to see if all requirements of our case are fulfilled. One of the requirements is our testimony that we do indeed want to adopt and we have been given our children's history, have met them etc. Once we have given this, our part is completed.

The biggest reason most people do not pass court is that MOWA ( Ministry of Women and Children) have to write a recommendation letter that all documents are there and they are basically signing off on the case. For some reason, they are very random in getting letters there on the proper day. They are sometimes late or not at all. Not to be pessimistic, but I do not think we will pass court on the 24th. MOWA will have only had our paperwork on the baby for less than a week AND they have to write two letters for us because our kids are not siblings.

God could work a miracle on our behalf, but I am prepared to go, give our testimony and then come home and wait for all the documents to fall into place later on in the next few weeks. The only big bummer about not passing court is that we are not allowed to post pictures of our kids until we pass court and they are legally ours.

Once we have been given word we have passed court, all our files are gathered again for the US embassy. It takes a few more weeks for that to happen and then the US Embassy gives us an embassy date where the kids will get there Visas. They give our agency 10 slots every other Wednesday for embassy dates. So.. We are looking at Feb 16, March 2, 16 or 30th as to when our embassy appointment might be.

If you would like to pray with us, here are some specifics..

Safe travels ~ Greg has been out of the country before, but this will be mine and Abby's first time. We are excited, but scared too. Also pray we have good flying weather to Addis and coming home.

For Nathan and Esther ~ They are really excited to go to Nana and Gramp's house for a whole week and it does my heart good that they are nor homesick about us leaving. Please pray that they keep this attitude! :) And for my parents as they watch them all week.

For Micah and Sarah Faith~ That we have a good bonding experience with them

For our Health ~ Illness is common when traveling overseas with the strange food and also Addis is a very high altitude. I have a whole pharmacy packed, but I am praying I wont need any of it!

For Abby ~ I can't imagine what a trip like this will be like for a 13 year old girl. I am praying God uses this trip in many ways to mold her heart and life for HIM.

We arrive back in the US early Tuesday morning Jan 25th and then will eventually land in Charlotte around 3:15pm.

Thanks so much for joining us on this journey! I will check in next time from ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA!!

PINK!!!!!

We received the call today at 11:51. The first thing Caitlin said was, "I have some good news for you.." Right then and there I just prayed a big Thank you JESUS! Then after we got Greg on the speaker phone she told us that she had a referral for a 5 month old baby GIRL!!!!! I was so shocked! I really thought that it was going to be a boy! We are so excited! I honestly didn't hear much she said after that! She did say she was very healthy. :)

All three kids, ( but especially the girls) were just running around the kitchen yelling and screaming ," a sister..we have a new sister!!!" :) They all three told me after the call they had all been secretly hoping for a girl..even my mom said that!

We got off the phone and we all five very impatiently waited for the email to come with pictures and when it FINALLY popped up in my inbox we all squealed! We opened the email and oh my..she is just beautiful! So SO SO pretty! She has big brown eyes and the prettiest bow tie lips. Oh I cannot wait to scoop her up and love on her!

We finished up on the paperwork and then went to Target to buys some PINK clothes! All I have is blue! I have some old clothes that I had saved from Abby and Esther, but when I pulled them out to wash them Abby said, "Mom, those clothes are so late 1990's. " LOL :) I really don't think the baby will care nearly as much as big sister.

We are naming her Sarah Faith and my, has this been a faith walk for us, but we are sooo very thankful for God blessing us with this special sweet baby girl.

AND we get to meet her and her big brother Micah in just 4 days!!! Whoo Hoo!!

Conference Call Today

We had a conference call with the director of African adoptions and our family coordinator this morning. They assured us that they were doing everything they possibly could to get us our referral as soon as possible and that they are speaking with the Ethiopian director daily about our case.

So here's the deal..there are babies in the Transition Home that meet our request. They are missing a "clearance paper" from the government office of the region they came from in order to be adopted. Until this paper is obtained their file cannot go to court. So really AWAA goes everyday and tries to get this paper... to no avail. We don't know if it is political or backlog paperwork or what, but that is where we are at.

They are very hopeful it will come in next week and everything will go off as planned. If not, we are going to talk again next Thursday and decide if we should not attend our court hearing. Then on the 24th, the judge will hear our case ( without us there) and AWAA will ask for an appeal and a second court date and we will then go and attend that one for two children. She said that more than likely the second court date would be only a week or two later and not into March or April.

Soooo we are still PRAYING HARD that a referral will come in this coming week ( like MONDAY!!) and all will go as planned. If not, it looks like we may be going to ET in February instead in January. (I keep telling myself that...the worst part of this is that we have to wait..the baby is there. Micah is there and ready..we just have to wait...I can do this.)

Thanks for the prayers and the encouragement you guys have given to us as we go through this.

No News..Prayer Rally!!

No news yet! I have been up since 2AM praying about all this. We leave in 12 days. I just am struggling with do we call our agency, demand answers and fight for this baby we don't even know or do we just rest in the Lord and wait for Him to work it all out for us?

I cant even think about flying to Ethiopia and not having a baby there Or going into the baby room at the Transition House and not knowing which one is ours. Our agency isn't really even addressing this yet and so I don't know which way to even think.

I guess we could just not show up for court in Jan, get a later court date and hope we get a referral soon. OR go and try to sign some sort of power of attorney when we get there for a baby we have never met? But then this leaves Micah in Ethiopia longer too and he is so anxious to start his new life here with us. Oh if we would just get that phone call today everything could fall into place!

Y'all please please please keep praying! I KNOW God has called us to this and I KNOW He wants these children to be rescued and I KNOW the enemy would like nothing better than for this to be a testimony for others to see how hard and not worth it adoption can be. I so want to show others that it is worth it and it is God's heart!

I am clinging to Psalms 37:5 this morning.

"Commit your way to the LORD, Trust also in Him, and He will do it."

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