I hope you all had a wonderful year and I hope that 2008 will be a great one! I doubt that it could be any better than this year though! I can't wait to see what the Lord has in store for us. Hopefully another trip to Ethiopia! I will post some pictures and video of the babies soon.
Go over and congratulate our friends at injera hot dog. They FINALLY passed court and will soon be able to bring home their 3 precious new children!!
Congrats to the Breedlove family , The Rooney family and Fairy Good Baby and The Beelers on their referrals!! Day 2 really is coming soon, we've just been a little busy around here for some odd reason :)
We received an email from someone asking for pictures of their little boy but we lost the email somehow. I think your last name was Hinojosa, so, if you are reading this, please email me so I can send you those pictures! We tried sending them from Ethiopia but we don't think it went through. Thanks! (elliemestas@gmail.com) Here is one.
They got a referral for a little girl!!! Felicity Yehualeshet Martin is soon to be the twinettes best friend! I am so excited that they will have a friend from the same little room, in the same little house in Ethiopia and come across the world together and live in the same little town in NC!! We were saying, "How cool it would be if they got 'the dancing baby' that we met in Ethiopia"...and guess what! It was her!! We are so excited for you guys and can not wait for you to bring her home!!! It was so neat to be able to share this experience with you guys, thanks for letting me tag along with Mel!
Jocelyn got her referral for a precious baby girl!! We are all so excited for you Jocelyn and can not wait until Pacey is in your arms!
Ok, I wrote everything down in a journal while I was there so I am going to post what I wrote :)
On My Way to Ethiopia!!!
We are almost there!!
(The pictures above were taken with our video camera because we lost our camera :( )
Today we arrived in Addis Ababa at 8:30 am Ethiopian time. The airport was kind of chaotic to say the least. We had to fill out our immigration cards and put them in this box thing along with a million other cards.(they probably won't know we were there until next year!) Next, we headed off to get our visas. The people were all very nice and Papa almost killed the man with his huge hikers backpack :) (not really, he just turned and smacked him, poor guy :) It was fairly calm inside the airport compared to when you get outside. Gracious!! We said that they should give you a Birr 101 class right after you exchange your money because you have to use it right away! (The men helping us with our luggage kind of ripped us off but at least we helped them out.) We got outside the doors and found Ryan and Tafesse waiting for us. It would have been just Tafesse but They had to use 2 cars to take all of our luggage! They took us to the Hilton and we washed up and rested for a little while before lunch.
We ate at 'Bier Garden', it was a really good German restaurant. There we met Abby, Ryan's wife, Belay, Travis, Joanna, Silas and Avery. (Travis and Joanna are the new Gladney Reps in Ethiopia and Silas and Avery are their kids.) Of course everyone adopting from Ethiopia through Gladney knows who Belay is!
After lunch, we went to the Gladney office and met Josiah!!!! It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life!
We walked into the office and waited outside the first door as Belay woke him up.
(poor baby, he had been inside by himself so he just went to sleep :(
As we walked in and saw him for the first time we all burst into tears! My first thought was 'Oh my goodness he is real!' he stood up and looked at us and then he burst into tears! (I think we scared him because even some of the staff were crying!) I mean, what a way to wake the poor kid! Bring in a bunch of crazy, crying, white people with cameras!
He is just so cute you can not put it into words. The pictures do not do any of the children justice.
We then went back to the hotel.
Josiah did not do very well at first. As you can see from the picture above ^ (I can't blame him) He was afraid and he kept trying to walk out of the hotel room. He was crying and was kind of unresponsive. I started to play with him though and he warmed up in about an hour and has been happy and an absolute joy ever since. His first english word was 'Ellie'! How cute is that! He is no longer afraid of us and has been rattling off to us in amharic.
Tafesse took us to a great little Italian place in an alley way. Josiah LOVES pasta! He ate an adult sized portion. No, he inhaled an adult sized portion of pasta and even ate some of Tafesse's lamb! He literally ate himself to sleep! He took a bite and then leaned over onto my mom and fell asleep with lamb still in his mouth.
We got back to the hotel and crashed. Today was one of the coolest most wonderfully amazing days of my life.
I was thinking about it and I told Mom, "He talks to us like we know amharic!" and then I realized, wait, we talk to him like he knows english! We have learned quite a bit of amharic because of him though. On our last day, we were talking to Josiah in amharic and our driver laughed and told us a story.
There was a man that wanted more then anything for his son to speak english so he sent him to school. The son still did not learn english, he did not want to learn english, he liked amharic. So he hired an english teacher from Europe to teach his son english. In the end the english teacher ended up learning amharic!
Ok, I am really excited to see how the second one is going to turn out. I loved these books, I hope the movie is as good!
Keziah was admitted to the hospital and just got home this afternoon. I never got a chance to post about it because I had the other 4 little kids which kind of took up a little bit of my time :) We are still waiting for the results from the lab but she has some kind of bacterial infection. They loaded her up on antibiotics though so she should be better soon. Poor baby :( Thank you for your prayers!
We are home safe and sound but my Mom and Dad are taking Keziah to the hospital. She has been really fussy all day. Her lymph nodes just swelled up so the Dr. said to take her in. Otherwise, all is well and I will be posting a LOT more about the trip as soon as we get settled :) I will also give an update on Little Kez as soon as we hear something.
Us with the McConomy's from Delaware
Us with Tigist, their birth mother, in front of a coffee bush.
Papa and Josiah in the pool. He loves to swim!
Here are some more photos of their first morning there and being with Josiah.
Here's an update I got this morning:
Josiah has spoken three 'english' words so far! His first word was ...of course 'ellie' :) 2nd..'doogy', he was reading his book and there was a picture of a dog and he has a toy dog. We told him several times...'doggy' and finally he held up his toy and the book and yelled "DOOGY!!!" It was absolutely precious! He is so much fun and he will fit in great with the boys! 3rd...Agua. (Spanish!) He has been smiling a WHOLE bunch lately and knows all of our names. We ask him, "where is mama?" or "where is papa?" and he will turn to look at the person and smile. He is understanding us a lot better and he is whispering a lot in amharic :) Some times he will rattle something off to us and smile but most of the time he whispers. He loves to turn the tv on and off (He claps and laughs) and flush the toilet (he waves bye-bye to the toilet). He is such a cuddle bug! Well, we are off to go get the girls!! We love you all!
This is a copy of the post at my parents blog...
This is Melissa filling everyone in. I got an email from my parents this afternoon that I am pasting below. They lost their digital camera at the Dulles airport, but that seems to have been the extent of their troubles...thank you, GOD!
From Jerry: "Our flight was pretty good. It was long but not unbearable. The Ethiopian staff were wonderful and really laid back. We actually got to sleep a few hours. They served us about three meals and the food was ok.
We got through the immigration stuff pretty painlessly at the airport and we were met by Ryan and Tafesse. They took us to the hotel with all our 8 suitcases and 5 carry-ons. The hotel has internet but for some reason we can't access our blog site.
We showered and then Tafesse came back for us around 12:30 to go buy another camera before we went to lunch. We ended up paying WAY too much for it but it was well worth it.
We then had lunch at a German restaurant with Ryan and Abby from Gladney, Belay, and a new couple that has been added to work alongside Ryan and Abby. The food was very good.
We then went to the Gladney office where another worker had taken Josiah for us to meet. We wanted to spend a day with him and get a chance to bond with him before we picked up the girls. We were so excited to meet him we were about ready to jump out of our skin. When we arrived we gave the camera and video camera to Ryan and the other guy (I forget his name) and they went into the room where Josiah was waiting for us. The poor little guy fell asleep waiting for us. They woke him up and we walked in at 3:13 p.m. (Ethiopia time) to see the cutest little guy you ever did see. He was quiet and shy. Belay was holding him and telling him who we were and then he gave him to Eileen. Of course she could not hold back the tears as she held him in her lap and kissed his face. She tried not to cry so as not to upset him but she just couldn't. The poor little guy got scared and started crying, too, which really was no surprise to us, we kind of expected he might do that. He wanted Belay, and wanted nothing to do with us. So Belay took him back, gently consoled him, told him again who we were and then put him on the couch between us. We gave him a toy car and he seemed to calm down. Then Belay left the room as did everyone else. We just sat with him and talked, and then he sat in Mama's lap. After about 15 minutes we left to take him back to the hotel.
When we got back to the hotel, Josiah got scared again and wanted to run out of the room. He ran to the door and tried to get out. So Eileen picked him up and did the humming song and rocked him and did tickle-tickles to his head and back. He calmed down again. We put new clothes on him and they looked really good. He really liked them; he kept looking at them and he really liked the shoes. He fit into the largest size shoes that we brought. Eileen was able to calm him down and we gave him some cute toys to play with.
Eileen and I were so tired that we both decided to take a nap before dinner. Ellie stayed up and played with Josiah. She played with him and took him for little walks and got him to play peek-a-boo with her. She really bonded with him! Eventually they were kicking the little inflatable ball back and forth in the room. He finally started laughing and talking to her. Up to that point he had not said a word. He is so cute. He really loves kicking the ball.
After we got up from our naps, Tafesse picked us up and we went out to an Italian restaurant to eat. He ate a bruschetta like it was candy. He licked his fingers and ate every single tomato speck. Then he ate a huge plate of penne pasta and a piece of lamb that Tafesse had shared with him. He no sooner took his last bite and literally leaned over for Mama to hold him and he fell asleep within 2 minutes in her arms. He ate himself to the point of unconsciousness. It was hilarious! We got back to the hotel, woke him up for bath time, and put him back to bed where he is now sleeping like a little angel. This day went absolutely superb. Tomorrow they pick us up at 9:00 we go to breakfast and then pick up the twinettes.
The Hotel is really great too. So much better than we expected. We have two rooms adjoining with two twin beds in both. Two portable cribs that are all metal and cold but the quilts will warm them up. We are very comfortable and happy!"
From Eileen:
"This place is wonderful. It really looks like CA!! Rolling Hills, palm trees, tropical plants, and the weather was perfect today. The actual city is a lot like Mexico. So, we feel very much at home.
Let me tell you how our trip started! The big suitcase was over the limit and the international rate was going to cost $540 just for that one. We explained it was humanitarian aid for orphanage and she said there was nothing she could do except split it into another extra bag that would lower the weight at least. Then the other extra bag was still $85. So, by having BJ bring another suitcase, it would have gone down to another $85. While we were repacking the lady walked over to us and said, hey, I've decided not to charge you for anything. Just bring it over here and I'll load it up. I don't know what will happen in DC but this is all I can do. We were shocked!!!! Blessings abounding. Then we got to DC and the agent asked for our receipt for the extra luggage. We didn't know what to do so we just said we didn't have one. He said he had to call his manager to see what to do. So we sat there looking at each other like "BUSTED" He said it was going to cost $380 for them. After about 5-10 minutes Jerry asked to speak to him privately. He told him it was humanitarian aid and we didn't have a receipt because they let us through at RDU. He then handed him our passports back and said OK go ahead and have a seat. Blessings abound again.
So, now we were just sitting there waiting to board. We saw several other Americans in the crowd of Ethiopians so we started to talk with them. Two of them were adoptive families w/ other agencies. Jerry was talking to them and started telling them our "HIS STORY" and suddenly the guy says: "HEY, I just heard your story yesterday on the radio. On the way to the airport this morning I was telling my wife all about it. You said you were going in four weeks so I figured you were going in December. I never expected to meet you here today!! I heard it on Focus on the Family Weekend Edition"! Can you believe this???????? They are both staying at the Hotel with us so we will be seeing each other a lot this week.
So, while we are talking this very old Ethiopian lady is sitting there crying because she lost her ticket. She flew in from Seattle and she did not speak English. The Ethiopian people around her were all trying to help her as were the agents. They were all so compassionate and nice. She was all alone. So, she finally calms down, sits on the floor and starts throwing up blood all over. Then at the same time, another African lady with three small children, 5,3,1yr. started calling out for help. Her 3 year old little girl fell in the bathroom and she was unconscious. Another adoptive mom and I ran over to help. The little girl was out of it. She was listless, we opened her eyelids and she didn't flinch. The agent is now calling 911. The mama is crying, I put my arms around her, started crying and just hugged her. Then the spirit told me to lay hands on this little girl. I literally walked around the crowd, laid a hand on her head raised the other way up to the LORD and I prayed "Our Heavenly Father in Jesus holy name please heal this precious child immediately. LORD restore her to perfect health in your name we beg you" It was miraculous. She immediately, sat up looked at her mama and started smiling like nothing was wrong. She stood up and started dancing and playing. It was unbelievable. The mother was shocked as was the crowd and she said, "Oh maybe she was just sleeping, we did get up really early this morning" There was no doubt that this little girl was unconscious. The paramedics got there just then, checked her out and said she was fine. Then they went to the old lady and checked her out. She was able to board the plane. So, this is how we lost the camera. Just as this all settled down, we had to board the plane. Ellie had the camera, she gave it to me, I could have sworn I put it in the duffel bag just before I ran to the little girl. So, either someone took it from the top of the bag or it fell out??? Who knows. It was just an unbelievable event.
So, the rest of the journey was going great. We were making friends with bunches of people on the plane, everyone was so friendly and there was such a spirit of love and unity. Our pictures were being passed all around and it was really amazing. Then, the lady w/the 3 little kids called out to me to come to her. This time the one year old was burning up w/fever. She said "Will you please pray for my son, I believe God sent you to me like an angel, help me please" So I did, I took his clothes off, got melted ice from the crew and wiped him down with a cold rag. He screamed and did not like it. We gave him tylenol and he seemed to calm down. This poor lady was on her way to Ghana to visit her parents. She was all alone and we adopted her throughout the flight. Ellie really helped her and the little girls fell in love with Ellie. They wanted our phone number to keep in touch. We parted with hugs kisses and prayers as she had to go board another plane. WHAT A DAY!!
That's all for today. WE love you and miss you. Stay tuned as this story continues.
LOVE HUGS & KISSES
Mama, Papa, Ellie and Josiah!!!
We are leaving day after tomorrow for Africa and our lives will never be the same!! I can not wait!!! Just think, 5 years ago, I was the youngest of three kids and all I wanted was to be a big sister (and I really wanted twin younger siblings!). Now I am the 3rd of 8 kids, 2 sets of twins!!! It pays to pray!! We will be bringing the laptop so we are planning on posting from Ethiopia. If anyone reading this post has their referral and are with Gladney, let us know what your child's name is and which house they are in and we will try to get some pictures!!
Just wondering, how many of my blog readers have twins? Just leave me a comment and tell me if you have any twins in your family.
I got my hair chopped for the trip so I will have to get a picture of it to show all of you! The only picture I had, I looked angry so I will try and get another one tomorrow :)
The little airplane is almost there! ^
I can not believe that this is actually happening!!
I can not believe that we are leaving this week!! Even though I always knew that we would be going, it just seemed like a far off dream! (and it will probably seem so until I am there!) We are totally packed and ready to go! All we have to do is grab our suitcases (all 7 of them + 3 carry-ons) and go...at 4 in the morning this Sunday... 8) ( i am NOT a morning person!) PLEASE pray that we do not get sick while there!!!!!!!!! Several people have gotten really sick so please pray that does not happen to us! That is the last thing we need, especially on that LONG plane ride home with the 3 babies. Also, please keep Jocelyn in your prayers as she had her referral but the parents decided to keep the baby after all :(
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Is he gorgeous or what??!! I L-O-V-E, love him!!
He is holding the little airplane with the american flag on it that we sent to him in his care package!! How cool is that? Next week is our last week without them and then we leave!
They are officially ours!! Our case finally went through! WHOO HOO!!!!!!!
We are going to Ethiopia to bring home Josiah, Keziah and Keren MESTAS!
I better get packing! :)
We leave the 18th and come home the 27th!
Our caseworker could not get a hold of The in-country representative in Ethiopia so we do not know how court went. I will post as soon as we hear!
Belay told Mary the wrong date, It is tomorrow!! Nov. 1st. This is just funny now :) I mean, who else would this happen to except us??!! Lord, PLEASE help it to work out tomorrow!! Talk about learning patience! :)
This is the most recent picture we have of Josiah. Isn't he precious??? I can not wait until tomorrow! Also, David and Robin have left for Ethiopia to bring home their precious baby girl!
We had the date wrong, it is actually tomorrow, Oct. 31st, so keep on praying! More news to come.
PLEASE pray that everything will go well tomorrow at court!! It is hard not knowing for sure that the babies are ours!!! I hope that the third time is a charm and that we will not have to reschedule our flights again because that gets pretty spensive :) We appreciate your prayers. I will post as soon as we hear!
Congratulations to the Clevingers!!! They got a referral for a precious 5 month old baby boy!
~Keren~
~Keziah~
Are they cute or what???
We are still waiting for new pictures of Josiah.
We got all the pictures back from the concert but the video is probably lost :( I will post the slideshow of those sometime soon. P.S. It is already on my parent's blog.
Well, yesterday was a blast! We had lunch with SCC, his lovely wife, Mrs. Chapman, and about 40-50 other people. My parents gave our adoption story and Mr. Chapman spoke about adoption and how Shaohannah's Hope came about. Afterwords, we went to the concert (which was wonderful!) and got to see them again backstage. They are so nice! My mom will tell the story way better than me though so check out her blog. I also got to meet Rob Mitchell, author of 'Castaway Kid', who was at the luncheon. We had tons of pictures and video from yesterday but guess what?? They all got deleted!! :( We have not taken any pictures on that card since then, so we were told that we can probably restore them. Once we get them back, I will post them!
The Ethiopian Court decided to put some new laws in effect and they need the birth mother to be there with three witnesses from now on. So our court date has been rescheduled yet again. It is Oct. 31st. Our travel is only one week after what we had before though. We leave the 18th of November and come home on 27th. We will be getting them the week of Thanksgiving! How appropriate is that? Hopefully everything will go well this time around and this will be the last rescheduling :)
Please pray that everything goes smoothly tommorow at court. We booked our flights and our hotel yesterday! We leave November 7th and come home on the 16th. I can't wait! Usually you wait until after court to book the tickets but the travel agent said that for the price that she found we had to book them yesterday and our caseworker said that it would be fine for us to arrive then as long as everything went well on Thursday. So please pray everything goes smoothly! We have an exciting weekend ahead of us and I can't wait for that either!
We have no fall colors yet so here is the picture of the sky :)
It is so much easier to see God's glory when the weather is like it is today!
The sun is shining, the breeze is blowing and the high today is only 74! It should get pretty chilly tonight though as the low is 43.
Today is also opening day for gun season. My Dad, brother and cousin went hunting this morning with no success but are hoping things will be better tonight :) Our Court date is in 5 days! (Ethiopia is a day ahead of us.) So next Thursday, Mary said she would call us with the details and we will book our flights and hotel. I can't wait! Let's just pray that everything goes smoothly and they approve us right away!
Sorry if this is kind of hard to read, I had it perfectly lined out with paragraphs and it looked so nice! And when I hit publish... It all got smashed together! :(
P.S.- I took this picture :)
Our court date has been rescheduled because of some holiday in Ethiopia. It is next Friday instead of this Friday now. Oh well,It works out better this way because of issues we were having with mandatory business trips for my dad and brother-in-law right around when we were supposed to go. We are now leaving the 8th of November and coming back on the 15th. It is only 30 days! I would have liked 15 days better but God's timing is always perfect. (We have more time to get ready now!)We also got a surprise email from Mary with two new pictures! here they are. (we are expecting some of Josiah but we don't have them yet.)
Keren "I know I'm cute"
Keziah "Peace dude"
We will most likely be traveling on the 25th but we will find out for sure this Friday after court. I am hoping to post from Ethiopia if the internet works but otherwise I will email the posts to my sister and have her do it :) We have Josiah and the twins suitcases all packed and I will wait until next week to start packing. (I always have to pack days before) We washed all the cute little clothes and baby toys and just about everything is ready for them! I can not wait!!!!!!!!
AND it is this friday!!!!!!!!!!!!! We leave October 25th! YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Renee, I hope you guys got yours too! I am jumping up and down screaming and I will probably be doing so until we leave :)
I decided to make another slideshow but this one is for the baby shower. I hope you like it!
We just got a call from 'Shaohannah's Hope' saying that we have a grant for $5,000!!! God is so good!!! Just thought that I would share the great news!!! Also, as far as I know, the courts opened on Monday so hopefully we will get a court date with in the next couple of weeks! P.S There is a baby shower post coming soon with lots of pictures :)
Here is a really cool video that my 'blog friend' Staci made about adoption.(these are some seriously cute kids in this video!)
Just in case no one saw the new pictures of the babies, they are in the slide show :) The Baby shower is this Sunday so I will be posting pictures of that on here. Thank you so much to Aunt Melissa and Aunt Renee! We got the shower gifts today! That was so sweet of you both!
The Ethiopian courts have been delayed in reopening until next Monday :( Our caseworker told us that it should be only be a few weeks until we hear from them about our travel date though :) Maybe if I try not to think about it, the time will go by faster! P.S This is only my 60th post! It seems like I have posted way more than that!
These are pictures that another Gladney family took of the Kolfe Center (the orphanage for older boys) that we raised all the money for. You can see why they need it. (They are actually building a library and I will post the information about that later.)
I am in the process of making a slide show of all the pictures we have of the kids (so far) for my blog, so check back in a few days for that! That is all for now...courts open day after tomorrow!!! We found out that we may not hear from them until the end of October or beginning of November , but we are praying that it will be alot sooner then that! Also, we are having our baby shower this Sunday! Thanks so much to the H's!! (I can't wait!)
Precious!!! (Notice the curls starting to sprout from Keziah's ^ head? I love curls!)
The Daileaders are in Ethiopia right now and they have taken pictures of the girls for us. They did not get to meet Josiah because he was getting a haircut :( I can not wait to see the pictures! Thank you Daileaders!
The charter school raised over $1000 for the Kolfe center in Ethiopia! (The Kolfe center is building a library and the school held a fundraiser for them) I am so excited and I pray that this money will be able to help them out wuth getting the library up and running. Thank You Franklin Academy!!! (6 more days!)
Nothing really interesting going on here. Just school,school and more school! STILL waiting for the courts to open! (only a week from tomorrow!) Good luck to the Daileaders! They left for Ethiopia today to bring home Sophie. We are praying for you guys! I can't wait until it is our turn to leave! Actually, there is something new! A Charter school in our town held a fundraiser for the orphanage and we are going to leave in a minute to pick up the checks. We have no idea how much they are for but I am so grateful and hope that the money will be able to help the orphanage a lot! I will post again later once I know how much we raised. ~Ellie~
