After Brad and I talked to Melissa for and hour and a half my girls approached me as I hung up and they said, we know we are now sharing a room and we are ok with that! Everyone was so excited and I think I saw the same face on my husband and my dad must have had 44 years ago when the doctor surprised him and told him his wife had just delivered unexpected twins. Its a smile from ear to ear and Eyes so wide that the scream oh, my! What do we do with 2! We were referred a boy and girl set of twins that are 3 years old and they will turn 4 years in September. We got many pictures (like 8) but they were not happy looking. The pictures were taken on a day they had their physicals and they went to a place where the staff didn't speak their language. I'm not surprised we didn't see smiles. They looked so sweet and precious. Three of the pictures have the boy putting his arm around his sister!
After only 1 week of letting the news of have two precious kids join our family (july 23rd) we got a call that we had a court date already and we were to leave on Aug 3 and get back on August 9th. We were floored and over the moon excited with our heads spinning on all we had to do before going. We were gearing up for the school year and yes we had just demoed our kids bathroom to the point that it was all studs and the only thing in it was a new tub - no fixtures, no toilet, no floor and no sink. Yikes! Also, I was to help lead in a Ethiopian Culture Camp that weekend. Our committee was expecting 200 people to come together for a all day Cultural Event and a Ethiopian Dinner in the evening. We were a little overwhelmed to say the least but about day 3 of our new news God gave us a peace like no other! He has worked and provided so much in this last month and I will try to do it justice as we go.
That same night of our call about the court date we realized we have to work hard on our bathroom. We had some help and Brad and I worked on finishing tiling the floor and we got a call in the middle of our work. We were overwhelmed and decided to call that person back. We climbed into bed at 1am that night and began to pray that God would be our provider. We were exhausted and overwhelmed and knew that God was able to handle things and we WEREN'T! After saying "Amen" Brad decided to check his phone for the message. It was a friend of ours that knew about our referral but didn't know we were soon leaving for Ethiopia. He is also a plumber and wanted to offer a tile guy that he would pay for his time if we could use him to tile our bathroom. We listened and just broke down crying! God in the very minute was providing for our needs in ways we could NEVER come up with on our own. That week God had spoken to many people who provided financially for the extra needs we had on adopting twins. He were so blown away at how God was walking this road with us and he will continue to do so.
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| We unfortunately had just a brief shopping during this trip but this is the shop we bought our goodies. |
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| This is a poor quality shot of a group of runners training in the athletic center of Addis Abeba. Ethiopian runners are the best and after losing my breath climbing stairs proved to me that training in the altitude makes all the difference! |
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| Eucalyptus Trees are harvested for fuel and building materials. These were lined up to be used for a building site next door. |
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| This is the site the trees were used. This man is amazingly balancing while cutting the tree trunk to the right length and lay it in place to be tied to another one. This is just an amazing process. Ethiopians have so much ingenuity and use their resources amazingly. |
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| Enjoying a cultural dinner with our travel group. |
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| We ate lunch on top of a 8 story building near Hannah's Hope on our last day in Ethiopia. It was a great view and lots of building going on around that part of Addis. |
