This week: The Ordinary & Extraordinary

Common and Ordinary

Uncommon and Extraordinary

We are home!!!

It is soooooo good to be back home. After a long 36+ hour travel from Ethiopia to Spokane, we arrived late Saturday night. There were many people who came to the airport to welcome us at our late arrival. It was a very emotional time, but truly a blessing. We have been sleeping a lot and changing a lot of diapers...yes, I said 'we'. I have been changing some...though you might think this is hard to believe.

I'll try to post some more pictures later, but today begins our life back to normal...however normal it can be now that we have a son.

Day 6 in Ethiopia

Ezra reading his Bible for the first time!

Day 6

• We had another night of decent sleep and visited the National Museum today. It was ok, but we had the Orthodox church chanting incantations the whole day, and it nearly gave us a headache.
• We are all fairly tired and if there was a flight leaving Addis on Thursday night, we would have taken it, but Luftansa has no flights leaving on Thursday, so our normal schedule it is.
• We had a dinner with our adoption coordinator and the other families adopting from our agency. I have attached a few pictures of what we ate. It wasn't that bad, though it wouldn't be top on my list. The ladies (mom and Heidi) stayed home with Ezra, so I represented our family. The ladies went to sleep and Ezra got 12 hours of sleep…a record!!!
• The highlight of the evening was having the opportunity to talk with Eyob (the head administrator for our adoption agency here in Ethiopia). I asked him some questions about our son and he opened up a great story to me...
  
  He said that Abera (Ezra's Ethiopian name) came to the Addis Ababa care home early February of this year. After he got to the care home, he tested positive for HIV and everyone at the care home was brokenhearted because they had come to love this boy. Eyob said he remembers the day very specifically. Before Abera was taken to AHOPE, all of the care workers gathered and prayed 'that God would allow for the HIV to be taken away so that this boy Abera could get a home and be adopted.' Well, several months passed by and after a few months Abera was retested and tested negative. The care workers, staff, and Eyob were praising the Lord in thankfulness for His mighty work. Eyob said that CWA has had 250 children adopted from Ethiopia this year. I asked him how many children he has known who have tested positive and then tested negative? He said, "Abera has been the only one." It was really touching to hear him tell this story and I could see zeal upon his lips and tears of thankfulness filling his eyes. Just guess how I was responding?
• We are hoping to visit AHOPE tomorrow sometime to see place they care for AIDS orphans. Ezra Abera spent a few months there, so we want to stop by and thank them and extend our greetings to them.
• Our flight leaves Addis Ababa at 10:55 pm. Please pray for a smooth trip, espcially with Ezra and the long long flights.
• This will probably be the last post until we arrive in Spokane Saturday evening at 7:55 pm if everything goes as scheduled.

Here's a meal in Injera. Any guesses as to what it is?

This man is collecting garbage from the muddy river...

Ethiopia Days 1-5

Day 1, Friday

• Traveling, traveling, traveling, nothing more than this.

Day 2, Saturday

• More travel, travel, travel.
• Plane arrived in Addis Ababa at 9:00 pm.
• Went directly to hotel

Day 3, Sunday

• Went directly to Adoption care home and met the children.
• They simply just handed him to us. It was crazy, to realize we had truley been entrusted to care for this child and they just let us have him.

Things we learned in the first 18 hours with our son:

• He eats every two hours or so
• He had only had formula from bottles in feeding
• He is a big little boy…somewhere around 20 lbs
• He has a good set of lungs
• He has a very strong will and impatient temper...but we love him!
• He talks to you with his eyes

Day 4, Monday

More of the same. It is hard to do very much here in Ethiopia with a baby. The other couples from our agency who have the same embassy appointment as we do all have older children, so they are able to go about doing a lot of things and all we really want to do is hang out in the room, sleep when Ezra naps, eat food and drink coffee.

Day 5, Tuesday

• Thank you for praying, whoever has been praying. We had our best night of sleep thus far. Ezra only woke up twice and was asleep from 9:00 pm to 6 am.
• Pray for poopie! Ezra has not poo'd since we got him on Sunday morning…so it has been 48 hours. We are going to go to the pharmacy looking for something to help…maybe a suppository or something like that. [this prayer request has been answered in a BIG way, 'nuff said].
• I would write more about the city and people of Addis Ababa, but I have to say we haven't done very many things outside of normal care for a 10 month old baby.
• We did go to a pizza restaurant last night…a good change of pace from some of the other food we have been eating, though we have liked what we've eaten.
• It is Tuesday morning here and today we stand before the US embassy judge. It should only take about 10 minutes and then they declare us a family. Yeah! Yesterday we worked on our paperwork with the adoption agency so hopefully all will go smoothly.
• Please continue to pray that we'll all stay healthy. So far so good but we all accidentally brushed our teeth with the tap water here.

Ezra and Ethiopia starting tomorrow!

Well, we leave bright and early tomorrow morning. We will try to post every few days, though we don't know if we'll be able to post pictures or not. The Ghion Hotel has dial-up internet service, but Hi-Speed Internet is no where to be found in Ethiopia...from what we have heard. We are excited to share our son with you all and look forward to spending a week in Ethiopia. Below are some new pictures we received when the Bade's and McConnell's were able to see, hold and play with our son.

Embassy Date - August 21st!!!

We just got the call and we are now trying to find flight(s) to and from Ethiopia!!!

McConnell & Bade Homecoming from Ethiopia

As some of you might know, Patrick and Jennifer McConnell and Greg and Terri Bade have each been in the process of adopting 3 children each from Ethiopia. Well, both families have been in Ethiopia these past two weeks picking up their children. On Saturday night, the McConnell’s came in and on late Sunday night, 12:45 am, Greg and his oldest daughter Hannah returned with the Bade’s three new children. Each of these nights were filled with exuberant joy, tears of thankfulness, and a growth in understanding of God’s adoptive love for His children. For all those who were able to come welcome the weary travelers home…they were blessed to see such genuine love in both the children coming from Ethiopia and in the family and friends who have faithfully partnered in prayer, sacrificial financial giving and much much more.

As Heidi and I drove away from the airport each evening, we thanked the Lord for the opportunity to have come to the airport and welcome our friend’s home. When the McConnell’s arrived, the three boys eagerly hugged their new sisters and gave giant bear hugs to Jennifer’s parents. Smiles abounded and love displayed so wonderfully.

Sunday night, when the Bade’s arrived home, John Rocco, age 6 (or so), ran down the exit terminal and threw his arms around Terri (who didn’t travel to Ethiopia because she was a little busy caring for six of their other children) and gave her a big hug and kiss. It was truly soul-stirring.

Enjoy the pictures!

The McConnell Clan

The Bade Family

2nd year anniversary

July 30th was our 2 year anniversary! I had just gotten back from the Sawatzky Men Camping Trip, but we rested at home and then went to a great dinner, etc. We stayed at the Oxford Suites, very nice and they left us a dozen roses in our room! The pictures are from the deck from our room.

Sawatzky Men's Camping Trip

Each summer, a number of the guy relatives from Heidi's side of the family go camping for a long weekend at Potholes State Park. Lame name, great place. The weekend,back on the last weekend in July, was a great time, full of eating guy foods...milk duds, chips and salsa, steak, salmon, braut's, etc. Volleyball and watersports are also non-negotiable activities with a guy's camping trip.

One other yearly tradition is to build a 'house' from woodworking scraps. Thus, if you don't understand what the picture is with the wood and steak fat in it, you will just have to be satisfied by knowing it was a guy's camping trip, so things don't need explanations.

Mike and Greg lathering up Sunscreen. This picture is for the wives, so they know we were wearing sunscreen the whole weekend!

Our house we built, with leftover steak fat. This added fuel to the fire.

Camp fire! What other entertainment do guys need for a night?

Spike and Dig Volleyball Tourney

Here are some pictures from this past weekend's volleyball tourney. The team I was playing on made it to the Semifinals, but we lost a nail biter! There were 2 teams from people within FBC, and one of the teams won their division