ISOLATION

Looks like we will be sticking around the house for a few days as the kids have hand-foot-mouth disease. bummer for them. For those of you who think this sounds a bit strange, no it is not the kind that cows and other farm animals get. I had never heard of it until I had little ones b/c most of the time adults have no symptoms. I had thought they escaped with a mild case of it a few weeks ago, but i must have been mistaken. They both have spots, spots, and more spots! I am putting some medicine on Juliana's mouth spots when she eats, but other than that they seem to be their normal selves. Unfortunately we will miss a pool party tomorrow afternoon, and possibly church on Sunday.

Yesterday brought good news in the mail. We have been scheduled to have our fingerprints taken in Omaha at the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services office on August 25th at 12:00. Yay! This will be in regards to the VISA for our new child. One more step to look forward to completing. I have been blessed lately by some other adoption blogs I have been watching to see families that have recieved referrals. It is an encouragement to my heart to see their joy and excitement and to rejoice with them in their good news! Also, we will be attending our second round of classes with Holt in Omaha mid September - the 14th maybe? Well, I called to confirm our attendance yesterday anyway. I look forward to the fact that I have an excuse to visit my sister and her family in Omaha - twice!

Statistics

I was trying to get a general feel for the health status of the people of Ethiopia and ran across these stats. I have looked at both the UNICEF website and the stats compiled by the US Department of State for Ethiopia. I couldn't figure out how to make it look like a table, so I have listed the parameter on the left and the US stat is first, followed by the Ethiopia stat. Here is what I found:

United States followed by Ethiopia

median age: 36.7 yr ; 18.1 yr
life expectancy: 78 yr ; 49.4 yr
birth rate: 14.18/1,000 population ; 36.8/1,000 population
death rate: 8.27/1,000 population ; 14.49/1,000 population
infant mortality: 6.3 deaths/1,000 live births ; 90.24/1,000
fertility rate: 2.1 children/woman ; 4.99/woman
literacy: 99% ; 42.7%
population below poverty line: 12% ; 38.7%

Just some food for thought...hopefully I will have time soon to dig into these a bit more.

A Sweet Day

Amid the day-to-day life of our family the Lord is sometimes pleased to lavish extra grace upon Juliana, Evan and me to give us an especially sweet day together. Don't get me wrong, I love being at home with my kiddos every day, however there are days that are especially difficult and days that are especially sweet. Today was one of those especially sweet days.

It started off this morning with a conversation between Juliana and me as we looked at one of the Holt adoption newsletter/magazines. I was showing her pictures of the Ethiopia care center, care center workers, and pictures of some of the children at the care center. She had a hard time understanding why the care workers were not the mommies and daddies, but was so excited about us being able to be the family to a little one. She kept asking me if we could have this girl or that boy. What a sweet thing it is to be able to pray with her for her new brother or sister and to see the excitement on her face as she looks forward to the adoption. I pray that the Lord would be preparing her little almost 3 year old heart to be a big sister that will glorify her savior. It was about 70 degrees and raining much of the morning so after a grocery run we played out in the rain for a while. There was a pretty good fountain coming down off a corner of our garage and the kids had a ball playing in it. While outside Juliana came up with a great plan for when Craig came home from work. We listened carefully for his noisy deisel blazer and quickly hid behind a tree. When he started coming up the sidewalk we jumped out, pretended like we were monkeys and tackled him...because, of course, he was the banana.

On the adoption homefront we applied for a Shaohannah's Hope grant yesterday. There are a few documents we need to compile for that and also some writing we will have to do to complete the application process. They say that it could take 3-6 months for us to hear back as to whether we will be awarded a grant...please be praying that we might receive help from their organization.

3-6 months

As of last Thursday our 3-6 month wait for a referral has begun! It is a bit unreal to me that we are at this point in the process. We had anticipated being done with our dossier several months ago and were slowed up by some health issues and that pesky tax form, so it is a little crazy to think that we actually FINALLY got our dossier done! Within the next month and a half or so we will be notified as to when we need to report to Omaha for fingerprinting by the Immigration office to complete processing of the travel visa for our child. Wow! This is becoming so much more real now! Yay! I pray that the Lord will cause us to glorify Him in this waiting time. How easy it is to get stuck living in future anticipation and miss the gifts of grace today.

Adios to our not-so-little dossier

We received an email from Holt today that they received our dossier and other than a minor clarification, it looks great! The first picture is the final stack of papers that made up our dossier. I asked in an email about when our wait "officially" starts and expect to hear back from the Ethiopia program representative Monday. It feels soooooooooooo good to be at this point finally!

Juliana has had a pretty exciting week. On Tuesday Craig took her on a date to a matinee movie and she got a pop afterwards - what a treat! The second pic is from when daddy picked her up for their date. Today we attended Sparky's birthday party at the bank where Craig works - yet another highlight on the social calendar for most almost-three year olds in McCook. For those of you who don't know, Sparky is the bank's kids club mascot who makes appearances occasionally throughout the year. It was really sweet b/c she wanted to color a picture for Sparky for his birthday so she colored a picture of the story of Daniel and the lions den. Last year she wouldn't get near him, but this year she actually hugged him and gave him the picture. After dinner we headed to the county fair which is here in town this week. The bank kindly gave employees two free sheets of tickets so Juliana got to ride a handful of rides and it didn't cost us a thing! We tried to put Evan on two of them, but he just wasn't up for it. In the last picture, Juliana is on the right side. She is pointing to a ride that she requested we put her on...yeah, we told her maybe next year. It is such a great blessing to see our kids having fun...it will be even more so when we have a new little one to join us!

HAPPY DAY!

There are only a few reasons i would put a picture up of our crusty old mailbox...and one is for the arrival of our long-awaited tax form. YAY!!!!! Our dossier is done and I anticipate we will notarize about 10 papers this afternoon and get it in the mail tomorrow!

waiting, waiting, waiting

We got a notice that our second round of classes from Holt will be held in mid-September. I look forward to possibly seeing the same families that we went through the first set of classes with. It would be fun to see them again though we really barely know them :) Still waiting on the tax form and are not quite sure what to do if it doesn't come very soon...hmmm. As I say every day, maybe it will be here tomorrow :) Our check for the copies ($39!) was cashed in early June and they confirmed that they recieved our request. I guess that our little ethiopian baby just isn't ready for us yet and in the Lord's time all of our paperwork will be DONE! Oh happy day when it arrives!

Life has seemed pretty usual without the daily buzz of adoption happenings. We have had fun lately as you can see in the pictures. The first was our attempt at feeding the ducks. We actually did try to get out of the van to feed them, but i got a little freaked out when the 100 or so ducks started migrating towards us...and there were also the big ugly grumpy ducks in the mix. i don't mess with ducks that are as big as I am! We were much happier just throwing our bread out the van window, Ha! The second pic is from an evening dubbed "Mom Prom 2008". It was Andrea's birthday (she is in the teal and white gown) and one of her gifts was the vintage evening gown she is wearing, so we had to dress to acompany her to dinner of course! I haven't laughed that hard in sooooo long :) It is funny to think that there are 23 kids represented by the mommas in the picture, with 3 more on the way. The other pics are pretty self-explanatory. Evan is pretty steady on his feet these days. He was showing off his spinning skillz to us this evening. I am battling him with this TERRIBLE screech he has developed which he uses when things do not go his way. Funny how as adults we learn to hide our "terrible screeches" and turn them into much more "respectable" sins like quiet discontent and impatience. These kids are such little mirrors of my heart! I think it would be better for us to stick to the terrible screeches so that we would not fool ourselves into thinking we are doing well with the Lord. Evan is getting some molars and has had a rough few days. Juliana and I had a memorable conversation this morning in the kitchen. It went a little like this:

Juliana: I'm gonna bon you!
Me: (stifling laughter) Did you say that your gonna bon me?
Juliana: (very seriously) Yeah, I'm gonna bon you. Well, I'm not gonna bon you because your my momma.
Me: What does bon mean?
Juliana: I dunno. (on her way running into the living room) It means you run, run, run, really fast like this and tackle.

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Ethiopia Facts

Geography
Area: 1.1 million sq. km (472,000 sq. mi.); about the size of Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico combined.
Cities: Capital--Addis Ababa (pop. 5 million). Other cities--Dire Dawa (237,000), Nazret (189,000), Gondar (163,000), Dessie (142,000), Mekelle (141,000), Bahir Dar (140,000), Jimma (132,000), Awassa (104,000).
Terrain: High plateau, mountains, dry lowland plains.
Climate: Temperate in the highlands; hot in the lowlands.

People
Nationality: Noun and adjective--Ethiopian(s).
Population (2005): 77 million.
Annual growth rate: 2.7%.
Ethnic groups (est.): Oromo 40%, Amhara 25%, Tigre 7%, Somali 6%, Sidama 9%, Gurage 2%, Wolaita 4%, Afar 4%, other nationalities 3%.
Religions (est.): Ethiopian Orthodox Christian 40%, Sunni Muslim 45-50%, Protestant 5%, remainder indigenous beliefs.
Languages: Amharic (official), Tigrinya, Arabic, Guaragigna, Oromigna, English, Somali.
Education: Years compulsory--none. Attendance (elementary) 57%. Literacy--43%.
Health: Infant mortality rate--93/1,000 live births.
Work force: Agriculture--80%. Industry and commerce--20%.

Juliana's big ideas

So, since not much is happening on the adoption homefront except for us getting the second reminder of the big $2700 check we need to send in with our dossier, i thought i would post a few of Juliana's big ideas today.

"My husband is going to buy me LOTS of bracelets and Jewly" (emphasis on LOTS)

Craig was talking to her tonight about being thankful for the gifts God gives us. She thought for only a second and proclaimed, "I want to give God a gift." Craig tried his best to explain that by praising God and doing things for other people for His glory we are giving God a gift, but this just didn't seem to satisfy her. She replied very seriously, "No Dad, I want to give God a real gift...I want to give Him a rabbit."

patience..or lack of

Waiting for this last piece of paperwork for the dossier has proven to be a mirror into my soul. How easy it is to talk of trusting in the Lord's timing and to say the Lord is good and how quickly my sinful heart begins to doubt and become angry when things do not follow my desires. My lack of blogging has been one way of coping with my frustration/sin as I have put all about adoption out of my mind. That way I am not so disappointed when day by day the mail proves that we are to continue to wait. Today I will begin battling that unbelief of impatience so that I will again hope in the Lord and REJOICE in the waiting place He has us in. We are not at the mercy of the IRS, for the Lord is sovereign over the IRS! I have sought some wise counsel from one of my favorite theologians John Piper:

"Impatience is a form of unbelief. It's what we begin to feel when we start to doubt the wisdom of God's timing or the goodness of his guidance. It springs up in our hearts when the road to success gets muddy or strewn with boulders or blocked by some fallen tree. The battle with impatience can be a little skirmish over a long wait in a checkout lane. Or it can be a major combat over a handicap or disease or circumstance that knocks out half your dreams.

The opposite of impatience is not a glib, superficial denial of frustration. The opposite of impatience is a deepening, ripening, peaceful willingness either to wait for God where you are in the place of obedience, or to persevere at the pace he allows on the road of obedience—to wait in his place, or to go at his pace." John Piper (Battling the unbelief of impatience)

On a lighter note, during a bedtime conversation last night Juliana decided completely out of the blue that she would like a boy from Ethiopia to cuddle with. This is a BIG change! Sorry again for the lack of posts. Please stay tuned to the blog, I will begin to post regularly again...promise!

Random research

I started wondering about travel and vaccinations this evening so I thought I would share what I found. Good news! We won't have to take anti-malarial meds :) We will, however, have to get yellow fever vaccinations before we travel and we will have to travel to North Platte to get them. Read it for yourself...

Drugs to Prevent Malaria (antimalarial drugs)
If you will be visiting a malaria risk area in Ethiopia, you will need to take one of the following antimalarial drugs: atovaquone/proquanil, doxycycline, or mefloquine (primaquine).
Note: Chloroquine is NOT an effective antimalarial drug in Ethiopia and should not be taken to prevent malaria in this region.Malaria risk area in Ethiopia: All areas at altitudes below 2,000m No risk in Addis Ababa.

News from Ethiopia

Here is a link to pictures and a blog that Holt International does regarding its new care center in Ethiopia. This is where we will go to meet our child and these are the people we who will be taking care of him or her :) http://holtintl.org/blog/?cat=15

This week

This week it appears we will continue waiting on the mail for that pesky tax form to add to our dossier. Last week I went through our dossier paperwork (above) , made copies, and double checked all that we have done so far. We have to have three complete copies of our dossier - one for Ethiopia, one for Holt, and one for us. Funny to think that the paperwork in the picture is our ticket to our new baby boy or girl.

It is probably good that the adoption homefront is quiet as we have a busy week ahead of us. doctor's appt's for a few of us and preparation for leading a christian worldview study for high schoolers/anyone who wants to come. Worldview stuff has always been something I have been interested in, yet have never taken the time until now to dig into it. It would have been crazy helpful in college when you are hit with many different liberal worldviews of the professors to know how to challenge them (respectfully, of course) and be a witness for biblical truth.

In family news, Evan is walking everywhere and it seems that he is constantly getting hurt. My family used to call me pinball when I was young b/c I used to bonk my head so often...maybe that name will be passed on. (yeah, i know a few of you will call me that when you see me. it is good for my pride to have a laugh at myself every now and then!) Juliana is already super excited about her birthday in August. She is very interested in rhyming words and is often asking us "what rhymes with _____?" fill in the blank with various words. That is a great game, though she almost always fills in the blank with nearly impossible words to rhyme with such as refrigerator or zebra. Arrg!

Mixed emotions

We had a great time visiting with friends on Friday evening. Lots of BBQ, snacks, great weather, and fireworks. We have some friends who live across from the fairgrounds so we all camped out in their yard for the city fireworks show. Evan fell asleep during the finale but Juliana seemed to be impressed :)

I so enjoy when people ask about the adoption b/c it is just fun for me to think about. Today I was recalling a conversation I had last night in which my friend and I were discussing, with excitement, the fact that our baby might be born around this time (according to the expected timeline of the whole process). This afternoon as I was praying for our child it dawned on me that though it is a really happy thing to think of our baby being born, it also would be a sad and life-changing time for the child's family. The birth of a baby is usually a great occasion, however, if everything went as expected there certainly wouldn't be a need for an adoption. It is so easy to just have the picture of the happy children at the orphanage in my head and forget that there was a hard road that brought them there. It is possible that the child will have lost one or both parents. Maybe the family simply does not have the resources to care for this new little one and chooses to make the difficult decision of entrusting their own flesh and blood to another family. Any situation I can think of would be one of loss and grief to the child and their extended family. Oh, I pray for that family who will soon be forever knit with us that you would be their strength and their song. Abound your grace to them that they might hope in Christ during their grief or loss. Thank you for your soveriegnty that ordains all things and your mercy and grace that always sustains your children. Please let us be a blessing to this family. I pray that you would be pleased to let us meet them and testify to them of Your goodness. I trust you to work all things for the good of your children and the glory of your name.

They've done their homework

It looks as though the U.S. Department of State has done their homework! They provide country specific travel information which seems to be a great resource in understanding the political scene of the area. The info is pretty long so I will post it over several days. Here is the some info regarding the relationship between Ethiopia and Eritrea:

Eritrea is a poor but developing East African country, the capital of which is Asmara. Formerly a province of Ethiopia, Eritrea became an independent country on May 24, 1993, following a 30-year struggle that culminated in an overwhelming referendum vote for independence.

Ethiopia/Eritrea Border Area: Ethiopia and Eritrea signed a peace agreement in December 2000 that ended their border war. However, the border remains an issue of contention between the governments of Ethiopia and Eritrea. The border area is a militarized zone where there exists the possibility of armed conflict between Ethiopian and Eritrean forces. American citizens are advised to avoid travel in the areas along the Eritrean/Ethiopian border (within 50 km/30 miles of the Ethiopian/Eritrean border) because of the dangers posed by land mines and because of the possibility of conflict between Ethiopian and Eritrean defense forces. A UN peacekeeping mission maintains only a minimal presence and has limited capability to monitor the border region. Due to abductions and banditry, Americans are advised to avoid travel within 30 miles of the Ethiopian-Eritrean border west of Adigrat to the Sudanese border, with the exception of the town of Axum, and within 60 miles east of Adigrat to the Djiboutian border. Embassy personnel are permitted to travel in these areas only on a case-by-case basis. Travel to the northern Afar Region towards the Eritrean border is also discouraged. Embassy personnel are permitted to travel there only on a case-by-case basis.

Politics anyone?

Ethiopia is bordered by the countries Somalia, Eritrea, Sudan, Kenya, and Djibouti. It is in the area called the “horn of Africa”. As far as I am aware, the political scene in Ethiopia is fairly stable, however, we have all heard the names of several of the countries surrounding Ethiopia countless times in the news lately as being in pretty serious political turmoil. It is entirely possible that instability in surrounding areas could impact our adoption. As we are waiting for our last few pieces of paper for our dossier I think I will dig into the history and political scene of the area and hopefully give you a synopsis of what is going on in that part of the world. History and politics definitely are NOT my strong point so this could be interesting...

Another addition to the family

So, as you may have guessed there is a funny story behind the above pictures. I have been looking for several years for a big tacky plastic christmas figurine for a little christmas idea i read a few years back. the idea is that during the month of december you place a note on him that says something to the effect of "pass Santa along to a neighbor, please keep him on our neighborhood block" and you place him in surprising or funny places in/on your neighbors lawn or house. if you still need more explanation, the fun is in not knowing where santa will turn up and in trying to figure out how to sneak santa over to a neighbor's home or yard. seems like a fun way to build neighborly relationships. i have been bummed the past few years to find that even at walmart the tacky christmas statues are $15-$20 and we just couldn't ever justify it in the budget. so, i was delighted to find just the perfect santa clause at a garage sale last week and it didn't cost me a dime!

i knew juliana would think it was neat, but i didn't expect her to carry him around practically the whole day after we got him. the pic of her "reading" to him is totally unposed. in the second pic she is helping him to look at the flowers outside, again unposed. that afternoon we took him out to the pool with us so that juliana could wash him. Hmmm...how do i link this post to adoption? Maybe just to express thankfulness for our new neighbors who are much more friendly than at our old neighborhood. their support and excitement regarding the adoption has been a blessing and i am so thankful that our new little merrihew will be welcomed into our neighborhood!

Another Victory!

Our prayers availed much today as I was quite pleased to be on hold on the phone for 15 minutes waiting for an IRS representative to field my call! Yay! I was able to confirm that our request for copies of our tax form had been recieved. Yay! Now I can wait with much more piece of mind knowing that they at least have our request in hand. As you can see from the above picture, the kids have been totally stressing about it - Ha! Today I am also trying to contact our social worker to talk with her a bit about special needs. Our family profile form asks if we are open at all to accepting a child with special needs. In the adoption world I have learned that special needs can mean an enormous range of things from severe medical disabilities to simply being born premature. We feel for our (Lord willing) first adoption that an inter-racial adoption is quite a bit to take on (though we are more than glad to do it!) and at this time we would not choose to take on special needs as well . . . though it may be something the Lord has for us later. Both Craig and I feel that we would be willing to take a preemie baby or mild medical needs, knowing that you are never REALLY assured that any child will be healthy. All that to say I'm not sure how to answer the special needs question, b/c really it depends what the special need is. Deb to the rescue! I am just waiting for a call back : )

...your call cannot be answered at this time

It seems so far that there is no such thing as "getting aggressive" with the IRS. We have yet to find a way to contact a live person. There are about four IRS offices across Nebraska, however, when I called the number listed for each one, they all said that there were no telephone services offered at this particular office. . . I wonder why they even have a phone number then! There is an 800 number, but it continues to tell me that due to the high number of calls my call can not be answered at this time. I will continue to try, but I am not to hopeful that I will ever get through to anyone. Maybe it will come in the mail soon : ) In the meantime we will stick our family representative, Juliana, on this seemingly impossible task. Believe me, she is pretty persuasive and may just be able to sweet talk those computers!

We also recently sent 0ut support letters to family and friends. We figured out that we have raised $16,000 of the needed $24,000 so far, which is pretty amazing to me when I think about it. If we have not raised the last $8,000 after hearing back from the letters we do have some other options before we would pursue a loan. If you are reading this and you didn't get a support letter and would like one please let me know and I would be more than happy to send one your way :) What an amazing thing it will be when all is said and done to look back and see how the Lord has provided $24,000 in a very short time to a family who lives on a pretty tight budget. I pray that this is an encouragement to all of you that we are called to trust and obey what we feel the Lord has for us...even if it is a crazy thing like travelling to Africa to pick up a baby! He is so faithful to provide the means to get us through as we seek to live by the cross.