We had a very good day. Woke up and scarfed down some Ethiopian breakfast (interesting stuff, not half bad) and left our hotel by 7:10 to get to Federal Court. We have a wonderful driver named Teddy Zuma....27 years old, super nice guy. We love him.
Court was a whole 3 minute interview. Judge was nice, gave us approval, and that was that. Crazy, 3 minutes!!!!
Teddy then drove us to the orphanage and we spent 3 hours with L and his nannies. He was very shy again at first, took him about 1 hour to warm up to us. lots of tears and very scared.....then, he got over it and we had a great time. It was fun to see him playing, laughing, running, and interacting with us. He has quite a little personality....very cautious and calculated but once you get him past that he smiles and laughs with the best of them. He is going to be much more shy than Ben, and we will need to be careful not to overwhelm him quickly when he is in the States....we can see he will just need to be eased into things for a while. He is very protective of his belongings (the matchbox cars we brought him which is about all he owns). He hides the cars in the couch cushions for later. He then put them in a bucket and wouldn't put them down. He also likes Iphones, same as Ben, and played with one for quite a while. We also gave him the picture book Rachel made, and he looked at it carefully with the nanny and went through each picture very slowly. He is much more developed than we expected, understands quite a bit of Amharic, and is intelligent according to the orphanage director. The nannies completely impressed us again. They love the kids, and the kids love them. The care they get at this orphanage is top notch, lots to be thankful for. There was an older nanny L is close too, and she was super helpful getting him comfortable with us and gently pushing him to sit with us and play. She spoke broken English, so we were able to chat with her and find out more details about L that were helpful now, and will be in the future.
We are pretty worn out after a long day, but thankful for the experiences. The Lord has been very good to us and worked things out so far better than we could have asked for or imagined. Thankful for our God who cares about these little ones in Africa and others parts of the world
Sobering fact: The orphanage L was at for the first 10 months of his life is pretty rough. They currently have approx. 2 kids die each day. L was under 10 LB's when he arrived at Edget orphanage (where he is now), completely malnourished, at 1 year old. It's somewhat amazing that he lived to this point.
Great quote: The older Nanny told us after looking at photos of you all that she is "so happy that L is going from no family to a large family!"
2 comments:
That is a great quote from the nanny. L will live a blessed life and grow up in the "excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus" Phl 3:8
Hi Rachel,
I think I already sent you a note through Google, but if not, congratulations! I ran across your blog while searching for MOWA issue information. We are getting close to obtaining our court date in Ethiopia for our daughter, and we probably live close. We are from Loveland! Would love to connect!
Heidi Smith
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