Our trip to Africa

So I've been trying and trying and trying to find time to update my blog and give a full play by play of all that we experienced, but I've been forced to realize, I just don't have the time! We didn't expect to pass court on our trip, thus giving us a few months once we came home before all the excitment of our next trip. But Praise God we did pass!!! So now we are scrambling to get everything done in a few short weeks that we had planned to do over the next few months. Not to mention I have that wonderful nesting/anxious feeling with all I need to do to get ready for our baby to come home!

Our trip was AMAZING! Maybe one day I'll have time to say a little more about it but for now I'm just going to post pictures from our trip and blog about our 1st meeting with A. Thank you to everyone who has prayed for us during this process, please continue to pray as we wait to get the final documents and get the final call to bring her home!
























Our first meeting with A was good. We waited outside while our guide went into the orphange and told them who we were there to see. Next thing we knew we were being ushered into livingroom of the orphanage. My good friend Mandie so blessed us by videoing our first meeting with A. When I walked in I saw her sitting on floor playing with some toys. Everything in me wanted to run over pick her up and love on her. But we have had the last 7 months to memeorize her face and long for the day when we get to meet her. For her we are just another set of faces (staring and making goofy faces at her). So we both sat on the ground next to her and stephen gave her his glasses, which she LOVED, and kept them the entire time we were there.
Finally I felt like she warmed up enough and I picked her up, she fussed a little, but then calmed down. It felt amazing to finally be holding her! I knew stephen wanted to hold her so eventually I handed her over to stephen. Well she was not too happy with this! She cried and cried but again eventaully calmed down once he gave her a lollypop=) She found stephen's beard very interesting since most of the men over there don't have facial hair. We had about 2 hours with her the first day and it was perfect, when it was time to go she was tired and ready for a nap.
In all we got to spend 4 days with her!
The last day was terrible. She had really warmed up to us and came kept reaching for me. I was able to feed her a snack and her lunch. Midway through Lunch Abel our guide showed up and we knew it was time to go....
I stood up and hugged her and told her how much we loved her. She's a snuggle bug so she enjoyed snuggling with me and I just lost it. I couldn't keep back the tears. Eventually I handed her over to one of the nannys and walked away. I couldn't look back..... I walked outside and mandie was standing there and she hugged me and I cried and cried and cried. It was so hard! Most of the trip we all were joking and having a good time but this day our hearts were so heavy that we did very little talking. The call to come back and get her can't come soon enough!





























We were also able to visit Yezelalem Minch, the ministry run by Birtukan and Nesibu (the guesthouse owners). What an amazing ministry. We knew alot about this ministry before we came but we were so humbled by the passion they have for the orphan children in Ethiopia. On saturday we got to help out with the feeding program for the children.







The last day was hard knowing that we were leaving and didn't know when we would be back and exciting because we were going to be able to see our kids back in the states. Stephen talked me into getting my hair braided a few hours before we left. We had an amazing group of people we traveled with and we had such a good time!

Almost done packing!!!!

Well we are almost ready to go!!! Donations are almost all ready (still need to do the final weigh in). I'm all packed and ready, and holding to his nature Stephen is still not packed=).



It's finally sinking in that we are leaving for Africa to meet our little girl FOR REAL! These last few weeks have been a blur of preparation and planning. It's amazing how much has to be done to travel and not to mention getting everything ready for your kids while your gone.
My stomach is starting to do flips everyday when I realize how much closer we are to leaving. The only thing that I'm still struggling with is leaving our kids here. I have never been away from them for more than 2 or 3 days (Bethany only 1 day!). I am going to miss them sooooooooooooo much that it just hurts thinking about leaving them. Yet I'm also looking forward to spending so much alone time with Stephen.
The kids are SO excited for their Papa and Barbie to come up and stay with them. I know they will do just fine, it's just this mama's heart that HATES being away from them!

So the plan is that we are leaving here Friday morning to catch our plane to Chicago at 12:00. We then have a 3 hour layover in Chicago till we get on our next flight to Frankfurt Germany. Once in Germany we have a 6 hour layover until the last leg to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia! We 'should' be getting in Saturday late in the evening. We're hoping to attend the Ethiopian church the next day, but really we will have to see what the entire week holds once we get there.

We will be meeting 'A' Monday morning (middle of the night on Sunday for you), if you think about it pray for us Sunday night that our first meeting would go good and that she won't be afraid of us. We have been waiting a long (7 months) for this day and we are just so excited that it's almost here!!!!

PS. I also plan to blog from Ethiopia if I'm able to! So check for updates while we are there!!

Trying Ethiopian food for the first time....

A while back we made plans with our best friends to go and eat at the Gosh Ethiopian Restaurant. This was my family's first time eating Ethiopian food. We were really excited to be eating the food that 'A' eats every day. I went into it a little nervous (I'm a bit of a picky eater). But the food was GREAT! Stephen and I loved it! The boys ate some of the food but they weren't huge fans of it (but we're going to work on them=). It really was a great night!

11 DAYS!!!!

Postponed

So our case was supposed to go before the judge yesterday to have one aspect of it settled....but.... our date had to be rescheduled due to a conflict of scheduling.
We're really bummed because we really hoped that this one aspect of our case would be behind us when we travel for our court date. As it stands now the judge is going to review everything the day of our court date. So we are praying that it all gets finalized that day and that maybe, possibly our letter could even be there that day?!
With how things are working right now this is a big prayer, but I have faith that if the Lord allows it than it WILL happen!
I can't go into much detail but please join me in praying that all will be worked out on May 19th!

Mwangaza Children’s Choir

We had the privledge of having the African Childrens Choir come and preform at our church last week. What a treat it was. Those kids were such a blessing to everyone there.
They told us all about their ministry.
This only whetted our appetite for Africa all the more! We are so excited to go knowing that there is a sweet 2 year old little girl there who we can't wait to meet!

EASTER!

We had a great day celebrating the resurection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! Our church family was able to again meet ALL together at the Bijou Theater in downtown Knoxville, which was a blast. Stephen was able to get up on stage with the kids and do their song, he was soooo cute! Isaac and Bethany both decided that they were tired and just passed out half way through. Then we had our best friends the Sams and Shields over for lunch and fellowship. The guys got to go out and shoot and us girls got to gab (which we're real good at=). The big kids had fun playing with the littles. What a blessing they are in our lives!


A few Easter pics....

(PS. I'm not yelling at Isaac in the picture above=) We were hammin it up)

He is Risen!!! He is risen INDEED!!! Come Lord Jesus COME!!!

Update!

Yea we got an update this morning! We really were unsure if we would get one or not. The social workers over in Ethiopia typically start doing updates every other month after the child turns 2. Well 'A' turned 2 a few months ago but we have still been able to get an update each month! I'm so happy we got this because even thought they say she is 2 she is still not walking by herself. We found out in this update that she is starting to cruise along the walls and taking a few steps by herself! This is so bittersweet. I'm so happy that she is growing and progressing but it hurts that we are missing these milestones in her life (espcially since we have already missed so much of it). The social workers continue to tell us that she is a very sweet little girl. I can only laugh when i read about her getting upset when another child takes away her toy and how she goes to the nanny to 'tell' on them with a sad face. We got about 12 new pictures of her, some of which she is wearing boy clothes which our boys think is rather funny. 38 days till we leave!!!!