Knowledge is Power

It is. I have been hungry for it. I placed an order at Amazon last night for some knowledge. How much can my mind learn that my heart hasn't already. Sometimes I "think" my heart knows more than my head. Regardless, here I am trying to seek after more.

Here are some recent reads on Ethiopia/Africa/orphans: (Every book is placed on our girls photo album. If you look closely you can see more of them:)

I bought this for Justin, my husband for his birthday. It is Bono's speech that he gave to the UN written on photos of his trip to Ethiopia in 1993 which began his ministry for 3rd world hurts. It is wonderful. He calls out the sleeping church which I love.

This next one is a lovely book with a page or two on each country in Africa. It didn't speak enough to feed my mind on ET but it is a great intro to each and every country in that glorious continent.

I am not yet finished with this one but it is WONDERFUL! Truly a tale of a woman who follows after her God given mission to begin an orphanage for the orphans of the AIDS victims. It has given me another insight beyond what my feeble mind can think of as far as the possibilities of this tragic disease. It is also a realization that we as adoptive parents are doing a wonderful thing in this world. Slowly but surely.

*look at the girls lovely mother Abebech in the background. God be with her.*

Also I "know" that two families were referred two different sets of twins this week through AGCI! That is wonderful. One set is 2 month old girls and the other set it 2 year old girls. We are so happy for you as we thought that is what God had for us. We have twin boys and they are superb. You will be doubly blessed:) God is good.

I will leave you with these scriptures to think upon:

Romans 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to HIS purpose.

Matthew 6:8 Be not ye therefore like unto them; for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.

Exodus 23:9 Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger; for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were stranger in the land of Egypt.

A Heavy Heart..

Today has been one of those days. I don't know if this against protocol but I feel like maybe it will help my heavy heart. If anyone knows if it is against the rules to post photos of the parents please let me know. I will remove this blog entry immediately.

This Jesus loving lady has been the center of our day today. Let me walk you through it. This morning I awoke with my boys in my bed. They were still asleep and I was thinking about decorating the girls room in white wash barn wood and a touch of green. Very Cute.

Then we all got up, got moving, and started to crack the books. Then we came to living room to read together and a thought about the girls with their dolls that we sent came into my mind. Then my friend called. Her and her daughter were shopping for sunglasses for the girls. She wanted to know what the girls names are going to be...

My friend posts something on her myspace that proclaims an immense burden for Ethiopia and Africa...

Tears slide down my cheeks. And then the talking begins. My oldest son, who is 9, is crying. Hard. He asks some tough questions.

Are we going to tell the girls about their mom when she dies? This is their mom.....

They will be sad. What if they get mad at us out of their hurt? Then they rebel and do some really bad things. Don't tell them mom. I wouldn't want to know. Sobbing.

Doesn't the mom want to get better? Why does there have to be poor countries where people have no food, no medicine, nothing? This is a 9 year old talking.

I don't know. God has a plan. He knows all things. Our hurt wrapped in the joy of getting our girls is the strangest emotion yet.

My day has resulted in my mom telling me how selfless our family is for doing this. That doesn't even touch this. I made this beautiful lady a 30+ page photo album of pictures of her and her girls and a few of us. I wrote a note inside. She loves Jesus. Mostly, all I could list was a word ending with a period. The fruits of the spirit were repeated many times. I made myself a copy too.

That is all I could do today.

love. joy. peace. longsuffering. gentleness. goodness. faith. meekness. temperance.

Emails..

I have some emails I want to share with you.

Also, I forgot to put this tidbit up about the photos of the doggies in the previous post. The brown one, we bred last year for puppies and sold them to help facilitate our funds for this adoption. We made 3600.00 and thus far we are debt free in this process. Glory to God!!

We go to church in a town of 300. 300 people and our church runs 700 plus. Anyhow a Christian church in our small village had a missionary from Ethiopia come and speak a few weeks. God is so fun!! We have been emailing and this is the latest one she sent:

Amber, Good to hear from you. The weather is warm right now with rain showers now and then for spring. But it was about 84degrees today but feels like 90 standing in the sun. You can get sunburned really easily here due to the elevation. Also you can get elevation sickness if you don't drink enough water during your time here. The church that I work with has a guest house if you are interested. I will send the attach file so you can see the prices.It hasn't even been ten days and I went to a funeral for a little boy of 11 who got hit by a car. My friend is a pastor and it was his wife's brother. It was so sad to hear the sisters crying at the grave telling their brother to wake up while people are digging the hole a little bigger for the coffin. Amber you and Justin are blessing these little girls by giving them a wonderful home. Just remember if they are older than five that they have seen a lot of death already in their little time here on this earth. May God bless you both for this amazing gift that you are giving them. I don't remember what your question was from the first e-mail that you sent me. Could you ask the questions again. I have a question for you.

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I also got an email for my lovely friend Maria!! You know who you are!! I hope you don't care what you shared but I wanted to let my other friends know your knowledge you shared. Her is a bit of what she said about what is to come:
Since we've returned we learned that some procedures have changed in Embassy practices. They're doing 10 families at a time and on 2 Monday's a month. I think it's the first and third. So you can 'kind of' (great talk for a teacher) guestimate when you'll travel. Also I'm thinking since the changes have been made with Central Authority (or whoever the big guns are) it's taken longer to get court dates so you can pray and count on your prayers being answered that all of the paperwork will get together at the same time and place allowing you to pass court the first time. The only reason it doesn't pass now is special circumstances. You know ALMAZ does her best to get all of the ducks in a row for quick success. (I've learned that moms have to go to court - or the relinquishing family.)
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WE HAVE A COURT DATE!

May 21st! I got the phone call on Thursday afternoon while I was driving home. With the boys in the back seat and the noise of the car I couldn't take the extra noise. Christy was like, "I have some good news, this came a lot sooner than I thought it would. You have a court date." And right when she said the date..silence. I said, "hello, are you still there." She said yes. I had her repeat it!

YAY for us!!

My dear friends Jenny and Brandon got theres and she told me that in an email that morning. That really got me hoping I would something similar. Hers is a week before mine but I still hope we get to travel together. Kristi, I see yours is around hers. And there was another blog I read today and we have the same date, May 21st. Is it Becky maybe?

Congrats to all the lovely court date winners!!!! This is such a huge step.

Since I can't show our two lovely girls on here, I will show our two lovely doggies. Bronx and Daisy our bulldogs:)

UPDATE Thank the LORD!!

Christy wrote us this afternoon! We have many new photos of our girls to gawk at and she wrote us a bit about our sweet, sweet girls..far, far away.

So i'm going to share that with you..minus the photos!!
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Dear Justin and Amber,

Thank you so much for your patience as I have been ordering the chaos of notes, pictures and information that was my trip to Ethiopia J I loved being there with all of the children, but I know that families love to hear about their individual child, so I have been writing up a little on each of the 65-70 children at Hannah’s Hope and that is mainly what took so much time. I hope that your Easter was blessed, and here is another thing to help keep the joy of this last weekend going!

Your girls are so funny! Both of them have these vibrant personalities that had me smiling and laughing all week. M seemed like she was everywhere, playing here and then there, with this toy and then that one, with this child and then that child, and then climbing in my lap and then running off to the swings…she has so much energy! But she is so sweet—she was always so smiley and I only saw her cry about once or twice, and it was when someone else took a toy that she had really wanted to play with. B (who likes to go by Betty) was one of the children who was glued to me whenever I was at HH. She loved to hug and kiss me, and snuggle up beside me when I would be sitting. She also loves to pose! I think you can see it in her pictures—there is this one pose she always wanted to do when I had the camera out—get ready for your little diva . Both of the girls were so good at playing with others, at respecting the special mothers and staff, were great eaters (M can feed herself really well) and I so enjoyed being with them!

Thank you for allowing me to love on them while I was in Ethiopia!

Grace and Peace,
Christy PenneyEthiopia Case Manager

Waiting..

Christy our caseworker arrived back in the office today. She sent out an email stating that trip was wonderful and she hopes to get back to us this week and let us know something new and hopefully have some new photos.
I can't stand the wait. It has seemed like I haven't heard anything for so long about our paperwork. Please tell us something about it this week.
I really don't know what to do about this waiting. We have talked about the money for travel. We've talked about every scenerio to come in the next few months. Especially when they come home to the States. How will they cope with the many changes, I have no idea? I'm thankful they will have each other.
I have a question for the families adopting through AGCI. Do they pray with our children over there? Is there any kind of a church setting or teaching on the Bible and God's word?
Hope everyone is doing well. As for me and mine, we are very well but far from content. We ache for our girls.

Amber