Boys become kings, girls will be queens
Wrapped in Your majesty
We left Dulles at 10:20 AM and 13 or so hours later we landed in Addis Ababa at approximately 6AM ET time. We were finally on the same soil as our son. Our driver picked us up and took us to our guest home and told us we had 15 minutes to get ready to leave... to meet our son. How does one recover from a 13 hour flight + rain-drenched hair in 15 minutes?? Who cares!!!!! We were about to meet our son!
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After 13 hours on a plane...2 hours waiting for visas + immigration + baggage + customs + 3o minutes waiting in cold rain for driver...we had 15 minutes to change and get ready to meet our son for the first time!!!!
Our driver and AWAA guide took us to E's orphanage with our lives in their hands. We have never seen anything like the driving in Addis... no traffic lights, street signs, stop signs... so major intersections are just free for alls. Yeah, totally weird. But somehow, it hasn't really bothered this back-seat, passenger-seat driver at all! We arrived at E's orphanage and they took us to a room and had us take off our shoes. Then we waited for what seemed like an eternity for them to bring E out... Chase and I were both shaking and only slightly freaking out. Then he finally arrived! He came right in with his huge, beautiful smile and gave me a huge hug. I didn't let go for a long time, and neither did he. Needless to say there were lots of tears shed!! I wouldn't remember it if it weren't on video, but our guide said to us right in the midst of the first hugs, "You are very lucky." He was so right. WE are the lucky ones, the blessed ones. This magnificent boy that has been through more in his life than we could even fathom... we are the ones that are blessed to be his parents and to experience the wonderful years we have left with him.
When we love, when we love the least of these
 Our beautiful boy that we had studied pictures of, imagined just how he would talk, walk, act... he was more than we ever could have dreamed. He was all smiles- beautiful, radiant smiles. He went through his package we brought- puzzles, cars, water gun, stickers, gum, soccer ball, playing cards, and phonics cards. Right away he blew us away with how he recognized the English alphabet and could read pretty much everything put in front of him! Totally wasn't expecting that at all! We also brought a new photo album with us and he looked at every page so studiously. Like he was trying to take it all in and memorize every page. We told him Amharic names for grandma, grandpa, aunt, and uncle, and he laughed at us trying to use the vocabulary. He didn't let on to understanding much English and we were a little worried... We used our guide to translate for a few minutes and then we were on our own. We played cars, puzzles, tossed the soccer ball back and forth, learned some Amharic words, and he showed us tricks with his new soccer ball. He also did tell us he was 9 and not 10. I was so thankful for those words, I felt like we had just gained a year back of his life that we missed.
After a while he took us outside for Chase to play soccer with him and his friends. He is so good!!! Near the end of the day our guide asked him in Amharic if he had any questions for us and his only question was, "When are they coming back for the last time to pick me up?" This broke our hearts. We told him we would be back just as soon as we can. Oh, how I can't even fathom leaving on Monday night. The thought breaks my heart...
Then they will be brave and free
Shout your name in victory
The day ended much too soon. We were taken back to our guest home where we pretty quickly crashed after being up for the last 24+ hours. We knew one thing for sure, we were totally in love with this amazing boy. We were amazed at how smart he was, how sweet he was, how happy he was, and how quickly he was comfortable with us. We couldn't imagine the next day getting any better. We were so thankful at how God had designed our family and brought us all together in this amazing country.
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