We leave in 4 days to go meet our kids for the first time!!!!! We will arrive in Addis on Christmas Day at 11:25 am!!!! It still doesn't seem real! My sister Ashli was able to meet our kids 2 weeks ago. The visit was incredible! Our son absolutely understood that she was his Aunt and he immediately loved her!!!!!!! We have pictures of Ashli kissing his face and him kissing her back!!!! What an amazing thing! Our baby girl took a little bit longer to warm up!! LOL! She is at the age where strangers are not ok!!!! However, over the course of a few hours, Ashli was able to lay in front of her on the floor, play with her, and eventually kiss her cheek!! So she will be absolutely fine!!
Something that really struck us about the visit she had with them, was how excited our son was that he was going to have a new brother! When Ashli showed him a picture of Devyn on her phone, he ran over to his bed and grabbed his scrapbook that we had sent to him 1 month ago! He ran up to her and showed her another picture of devyn and said "BROTHER"!!!! He continued to look at his picture and smile for quite a while!!!! We have been told that he had an older brother that was KILLED! Unfortunately, we don't have any details about that yet. I look at this and all I can do is cry and say "Thank you Lord for your redemption! Thank you for giving back what was taken away!" This is what God does through adoption! That is why it is so important that families answer this call!!!! Many of us have not experienced this incredible sense of loss at such an early age, so we just read things like this and move on with our day!!! THIS IS WHY THERE ARE SO MANY ORPHANS!!!!! Anyone who says that THEY ARE NOT CALLED TO ADOPT needs to reconsider what Jesus did on the cross for us so that WE COULD BE ADOPTED!!! So now, I will get off the soap box!! I'm just a little bit passionate right now.
We want to say again, how thankful we are for all the donations!! You donated ALL the funds for our first trip within 3 days of us putting the word out!!! We would not be this far down the road if it were not for each and everyone of you! Thank you also to ALL of our prayer partners! Please be praying that all of our families on this trip will have favor in court on December 27th!!!! We will be posting pics after we PASS! We love you all!!!!!!!!! HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
