In just 56 days, we will become a family of six! Yes, we finally received our court date to adopt our Ethiopian boys! There has been much delay in Ethiopian adoptions lately, so it took much longer than we thought to receive our court date, and the date is a little further away than we had hoped, but we are so thrilled to finally have a tangible date. There is always a slight chance that the court date could be moved up or delayed for unforseen reasons, but it will most likely stay the same. We are close to booking our flights, so we're really hoping at this point it doesn't change (we'll have to pay a lot to change our tickets if that happens). With WACAP we are officially called "Travel Group #43". There will be four other families with that same court date, adopting boys from the same orphanage, whom we will be traveling with once in Ethopia. It's been really special because we've been able to connect with each other, and some--if not all--of us will be on the same (loooong) flight to Ethiopia. One of the families I've been talking to is a Christian, homeschools, has two biological children like us, and is adopting two brothers, ages 5-1/2 and 3-1/2. It's so exciting to think that our boys are probably friends who play together and share the same room! We're very excited to meet and we hope to stay in touch over the years, for the boys' sakes (and ours). All the families in our group are adopting toddler to school-age boys, which gives us even more in common.
Our tentative travel itinerary is as follows: We will leave Phoenix April 14 and arrive in Washington D.C. We have a forced overnight layover there, so the airline is paying for our hotel room (yeah!). Then we fly out of D.C. Friday at noon. So, it will be a quick sight-seeing trip there! At least two of the other families are probably flying into DC at the same time (from Washington state and Oregon), so we will probably meet up with them there. We arrive in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia at 7:45am Saturday morning. It's a direct, almost 13-hour flight. Being direct, it's a shorter flight, which is great. The downside is that our bodies will think it's midnight when we get there. But we can't really go to sleep or we may not be able to sleep that night! So I am sure Saturday will be exhausting.
Sunday, our group travels about 6-8 hours by van to Ajuuja orphanage near Awassa to meet our boys for the first time! We will get to spend time with them for several hours Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, I believe. Then we travel back to the capitol (Addis) on Wednesday and go to court on Thursday. We will hopefully be able to meet one or more of the boys' family members during our visit to the orphanage. That is very important to us, so I hope it can happen. We leave Ethiopia at 10:15 Thursday night and fly about 18 hours to DC then on to Phx, getting us home late Friday night. There is a stop in Rome on our way home from Ethiopia, so we are throwing around the possibility of staying a day there before coming home. We're not sure if it's feasible at this point, but wouldn't it be wonderful if we could?!
So that's where we are now. After we adopt the boys, most of you know that we have to leave them in Ethiopia until their visas are ready. That takes between 5-8 weeks. I am sure that time will be like torture to us, but I also think we will be plenty busy making final preparations for the boys back home. God will carry us through that time. It will be much harder for the boys because they won't fully understand what is going on--especially T, the baby. Once we pass court in April, the boys are moved from the orphanage that they will have been at for 8 months to the WACAP House in Addis, which is run by WACAP staff. Then after that upheaval, the boys will come to America where EVERYTHING about their lives will be forever different. My heart aches for the pain and fear they will go through. How confusing this must be for both of them. Please keep praying for them, that God will protect not only their health, but their little hearts as well.
We have received much more pictures since those first two referral photos, along with a video of M (the 5-1/2 yr. old) receiving a care package from us. Seeing his beautiful smile was the most precious gift. We have heard that he is a charmer, very outgoing, and loves to run around playing soccer with all the "big boys". Sounds perfect for our family, doesn't he? When M saw the picture of our family in the photo album I sent for him, he kissed it. Wow, did that make me cry. In fact, everytime I watch the video (which is A LOT) I get choked up. I just can't believe that God is choosing to bless us in such a magnificent way with these two boys. Only God could have dreamed something this wonderful for us. I am so grateful and humble that we get to be their mommy and daddy.
I will keep you all posted as we move along, but please keep praying for us. We are so excited, yet so nervous to meet the boys for the first time. It's like being in the last trimester of a pregnancy and being nervous about the labor and how we're going to manage having four kids!
Blessings to you all.
