Our Court Trip in Ethiopia

We are excited to introduce our son, Fetinet Nikao

Well, we have been home from Ethiopia for almost 3 weeks now.  We have been very busy with getting our house ready to become a family of four and have been and still are, working on adoption grants, USCIS paperwork and continuing education.  To be honest I am so over all this paperwork and to-do's and just want my boy home!  I have been "nesting" I guess one would say.  Just like a couple months before Jalen came into this world, last touches were being done to his room and cleaning and organizing was in full force, yep, same thing going on now.  We have no idea when we will get the email saying we are cleared from the US Embassy, and can book our flights to go get Fetinet and bring him home and I want to have everything done and ready just like I did when I was pregnant, although I probably won't pack my bags this time.  We do know that lately it is taking 30-90 days before most families are getting the email and we are guessing we will bringing him home sometime between mid June to mid July!

While we were in Ethiopia we got to spend every day with our boy.  After breakfast we were taken to the transition home where he lives and and got to play with him and the other kids.  The cool thing is that all but 2 of the kids that are there now are kids that will be coming home very soon too and we know their families and all are within a drive from us!  We got to take a package to a little boy who will be meeting his forever family in the next couple weeks and got to take pictures and videos to share with all of their families who are waiting to travel for their court dates.  We also got to meet up with a great friend of mine whom we had never met in person but God gave us court dates within days of each other so it was very fitting that we met in Ethiopia.  We made friends with another couple who was staying at the guest house we were at and were also there for their court date, as well as we made friends with the guest house staff who were wonderful and we look forward to visiting them again real soon.  We got to take Fetinet to lunch everyday, got to give him his first ice cream, took him to the museum, zoo (which is very VERY little so he will be in shock when he comes to a zoo here), and got to play a lot of "futbol" with him, one of his favorite things to do.  We also got to meet his father and that was one of the best experiences we could have asked for.  We got to ask him questions, tell him about us and got pictures with him as well as a video of him leaving a message for Fetinet that we will show him when he is older.  We are keeping most of that time to ourselves for the privacy of our son but just know we couldn't have been more blessed by that meeting.

We got to ask Fetinet (through a translator) what his favorite colors were, if he wanted to share a room with Jalen, if he wanted top or bottom bunk and a bunch of other things to get his room ready when he gets here.  I also have been learning a little bit of Amharic and had a phrase book with me so I could say things to him like:  I am your mommy, this is your brother (while showing him pictures, are you hungry?, are you happy?, I love you, you are going to live with us and we are excited to have you in our family.  These all came from a little book I got on Amazon that gives words and phrases for adopting families, very helpful and he thought it was funny having me talk to him in his language as I was reading from this book :)

For those who have asked about him.  He is 7 years old and is in school now in which he learns Amharic (the native language of Addis Ababa but not his native language) and English amongst many other subjects but this was his first year so his English is very little.  We will be working with him to learn English and from what we have been told, many kids pick up on it pretty quick, but will also be trying to learn his language as well so we can make him feel more at home.  He will start 1st grade in the fall at the school right by our house and I have a meeting in 2 weeks with the principal to see the rooms and get information that the kindergartners know and what the 1st graders will be expected to know.   This school has yet to have a student from another country but this fall they will have one from Haiti, one from Ethiopia and one from the Ukraine...our town is becoming quite the adoption community!

So now I will leave you with a few photos from our trip...there are so many I would love to share but I would be here all night so we'll start with these :)

some random pictures of Addis Ababa

just need one more hand in this picture to be complete but oh how I love it!

views from our room

out to lunch at top view where he ate his first ice cream

out to lunch and carry his Brown Bear with him everywhere

this was in the midst of me taking picture after picture of him and he thought it was pretty funny

we got to visit Fetinet at school while he was taking a test, he got to leave early with us for the day but it was amazing talking to his teachers and the school psychologist and getting pictures of his classroom and classmates!

our first family picture after passing court

Headache, sore throat, tornado warnings, cancelled flights, and we couldn't be happier!

Pounding headache and unbearably sore throat, severe weather/tornadoes forecasted for our area, behind schedule with packing and getting Jalen ready for his week with his grandparents, and then in the middle of packing I get a phone call saying our flight was cancelled!  The after being on hold for hours I find out that we would not be able to get our regularly scheduled connecting flight through Chicago and would have to go through Houston!  Might not have been a big deal except we were meeting my parents and friends in Chicago and my mom was looking so forward to seeing us tomorrow.

What a day it has been and who would have thought that at the end of it we would really be at peace with it all, see God's plan and still get to see my parents and get to Ethiopia before our court date?!?

Let me start with my sickness on Friday.  I woke up with a terribly sore throat that progressed through the day and by the end of the day I had a pounding headache and could barely swallow.  I prayed and prayed to be fully healed by the morning because I had too much to do to be sick the day before leaving.  I was also very anxious about leaving this weekend because we were told that the storms lining up to come through Oklahoma were looking pretty bad and that there would be a lot of tornado warnings for our area with the worst being from Saturday night into Sunday morning.  1.  We would have been driving at 3:30am through the expected severe weather , 2.  I would be leaving Jalen knowing there may be a tornado (and by the way growing up in Illinois, I used to get physically ill when we had tornado warnings and although am better they still freak me out!)  3. My poor mother-in-law being mostly born and raised in Arizona has never experienced a tornado warning and is not from here and would have to get Jalen all packed up and headed to a friend's shelter by herself...just so many things to be nervous about.

Well let me just sum this all up by saying God always has a plan and we have a hard time seeing it when it doesn't seem to equate with our plan but when we look back, we see how much better His plan was.   I woke up this morning fully healed from my sore throat and pounding headache and let me tell you it was not the kind of sore throat and headache that goes away that quickly!  As of now, our town has yet to be hit with any severe weather and although our flights were cancelled, we were redirected through the same route to leave 1 day later.  We now can spend the last day home with Jalen and my mom-in-law and just relax mostly, and I can feel more prepared and not stressed about leaving.  Also we don't have to worry about driving to OKC in bad weather at 3:30am being very tired  to catch our flight.  Although our layover in Chicago was shortened, we still get to see my parents and will ultimately arrive in Ethiopia Tuesday night so we can sleep well and shower before court Wednesday morning.  So yes, all is well with us!

Also if you look at our fundraising thermometer it has increased by $1,000 very recently!  We have been blessed over and over again by dear friends and family and cannot thank everyone who has helped us financially and especially to those of you continuously praying for us.  Believe me, we feel the prayers and hope you know they are being answered!

This was posted on You Version.  Very appropriate to our situation I think...thank you Kent Denson for sending this to us :)

"Be still in the presence of the LORD, and wait patiently for him to act.  Psalm 37:7 NLT

When it rains it pours...and hooray for the rain!

Wednesday was quite a day, a day full of very apparent blessings and it was well needed after the Tuesday we had. 

You think one would learn that if God has provided for all things in our adoption, why would He stop now?  But there is also a very type A, must have a plan, in need of a budget, person that lives inside me that overpowers me at most times in my life.  So although I would say I know we have nothing to worry about with this adoption because He has it all, I still find myself stressing over every detail, double checking everything and trying to plan out everything.  I have learned that really is hard to do because it is most certainly out of our control and that has taught me a lot in the last 2 years, but I still have a ways to go too.  So Tuesday I was up late figuring out our budget and adding up all of our savings, checking, fundraising efforts, etc and planning on what would be coming in from our paychecks and trying to add it all up and see how much we would have left over from our paychecks after bills were paid, daycare was paid, our tithe was taken out, and the list goes on.  The numbers were not looking so hot and I was getting quite anxious to be honest.  Also of course we were working on our taxes which also costs money and of course in the same week had our tax, title and license fees due since we traded our cars last month to save money and have more room for our expanding family.  You can definitely say "when it rains it pours" and that is all I felt, one more thing piling up.  On top of that we realized we really should get our yellow fever vaccinations before we went because although in Addis Ababa, where we are going, you don't need it per the health dept, we also heard about people not having it and getting yellow fever there so we decided better safe than sorry.  I got rates on the shots being $100/person but that was at the health dept and they were booked for weeks!  Again, some anxiety setting in I called about 10 different places that offered the vaccine (none less than an hour from us either) and finally found one that would be open today (Good Friday) but would be $300 total and was an hour and a half from us so more gas, more money! 

Wednesday came though and I woke up to a message from a mom with our agency who just returned from Ethiopia bringing her daughter home.  She said she got a video of our little boy and had told the caregivers that they knew his mom here and they seemed to understand, our little guy was speaking in Amharic and my friend said she didn't understand a lot of it but did hear "beautiful mommy".  All worries of money and such were pushed aside because that truly made me realize that it WILL happen, it might not be on our timeline but he is our son and he WILL come home someday and the money WILL be there (yes I had to tell myself this many times before I started to believe it) 

So Wednesday was already looking pretty good and then I got a phone call from my husband asking me if I was sitting down...because we were being given money for our adoption from some anonymous donors in our church.  I think I literally let out a large sigh of relief and at the same time was praising God for the prefect timing (although I would've chosen the timing to be before Tuesday so I wouldn't have been so stressed out, I knew there was a reason).  About an hour later I found out about a couple more donations as well as the amount made from a Thirty-One party a dear friend put on for us.  I was really starting to question why all today?  why all at once? and then I got another phone call from my husband, asking if I was sitting down again....another donation came in from someone very special to our family.  Well that about did it for me.  There were no words, I just felt numb in such a good way but I also think it all hit me why all of this happened at once, I mean "when it rains, it pours" right?   

Well let me tell you after living in the desert for over 6 years I have had a new appreciation for the rain and over the past week, we have gotten a lot of it (literally) here and I found myself thanking God each morning for the beautiful rainy day.  So why does that saying always come with a bad connotation?  Tuesday I would say it was pouring negative but then Wednesday came and we had a flood of positive and I know God was telling me a few things.  1. That He has a plan for us and although I can plan, stress, cut-back and budget (which I still think should be done because it is the responsible thing to do), at the end of the day His plan will be shown He will meet the needs.  2.  God knows me and knows it usually takes CRAZY BIG things to occur for me to really see it as not just a coincidence and give Him all the glory and He knew this would do it.  I am learning and getting better each day at realizing all of the little things but this day was HUGE and I can say with 100% confidence that it was His plan and His workings through all people involved!   And lastly, 3.We all need to realize that usually when we have a "when it rains it pours" kind of a day, week, month, whatever, there is purpose for it.  Maybe the purpose is to humble us or make us feel what someone else is feeling.  Maybe it is for us to get a reality check and make a change in our lives.  And maybe it is for us to realize we need God more than we think and allows us to turn to him, give it all over and then let him show off and be glorified in it.  I'm sure there are so many reasons why it pours on all of us but after the storm comes the rainbow.

So all in all, I have left out the dollar amounts of all the donations for privacy reasons but I will share (and you can see by our updated fundraising thermometer to the side of this blog) that earlier this week we were sitting at $16,000 saved/raised and now are at almost $24,000!!!!!  God is SO good!!!

Thank you God for this week!

In the last week so much has happened and God has shown up every time and amazed us more and more each time.  Everything has been just falling into place so perfectly and with really cool stories every time. 

Our flight:  We had been looking for flights but wanted to wait until big brother's birth parent interview was complete just in case.  The day before it was scheduled I found the perfect flight and there were 3 tickets left so I got nervous and faithfully booked it, while they were processing everything the guy told me, "you are very lucky because there are now just 2 seats left on this flight".  We had to leave on a Sunday and arrive in Ethiopia by Monday at the latest and be home by the following Sunday and unless we wanted to pay a ton, it wasn't easy to find but what makes the flight even more perfect is that we have a 6 hour layover in Chicago so we will get to see my parents and anyone else who wants to come send us off.  We will be in Ethiopia for 5 full days and 5 nights!

Support:  Words cannot express our gratitude for all of our friends and family right now.  Although this is a very exciting time, at times it is also stressful planning time off from work, fundraising, budgeting, making sure we are doing everything we need to and getting everything in order for our trip away from Jalen.  Thanks to all of your prayers and support for us, every mountain is turning into a molehill.  Jalen gets to have his grandparents here while we are gone.  So many of you have jumped up to ask how you could help us raise money to get our upcoming fees and travel paid for and have came up with so many ideas for us.  The pure joy of hearing how excited you are for us makes each day so much better! We have had donations made recently from 5 friends, 4 of which are adopting as well which means the world to us.  There is just something so special about the adoption community.  You get to know so many people and really become so close to some that you feel like family.  You know so much about them and share a heart for orphans which is a very strong bond to have.  There is also something very special about supporting other families financially when you are also trying to fundraise yourself.  God provides and I pray that the donations we have gotten will be multiplied for the families who gave them.

God's Amazing Plan:  On the topic of getting to know other families, there is a family who is very special to us and has been for about 2 years now!  They live many miles away from us and are not adopting through our agency but they are adopting from Ethiopia and they have 2 precious babies waiting for them.  They have been on this journey almost 1 year longer than we have and I have prayed for them because they have been so patient, waiting on a court date for so long.  They saw their children's faces around the same time that our dossier arrived in Ethiopia...8 months ago!!!!  When we got news of our court date, she was overjoyed for us and it brought tears to my eyes knowing how happy she was but for me it felt bittersweet because in my mind it just wasn't fair.  I have been praying for her and her husband ever since even more than usual because I knew they were ready, it was their time to meet their children.  Well, last night I got a message from her that they were given a court date and it will be around the same time as ours.  I think I might have been just as excited as the day we found out our own court date!  I can't give out too much info because they are keeping it private for now but just know our paths will cross in ETHIOPIA!  We will get to meet in person and spend time together in ETHIOPIA, the country where our children are, the country that has brought us to know each other and we will be there together for the same purpose!  Honestly, does it get any better?  Just 1 month ago to the day I emailed her and said I wished we lived closer and could meet in person and although it would be a LONG shot, what if we met in Ethiopia someday...who knew that we would and so soon!  I can only say God had a little something to do with this, ya think?


Birth parent interview:  This happened last night while we slept and today we got word that it went well and we can officially go to our court date for our little guy.  This is also very bittersweet for me because although I can't lie and say I wasn't excited and didn't have a sigh of relief when I was told the news, I also very much so am saddened.  You start the adoption process because you see children grow up without families, without knowing what love is and it breaks your heart.  We see our own child grow up knowing our love for him and it really breaks our hearts to think another child may not ever know that feeling.  You start this thinking it is a good thing and happy and right in every way but then you learn more about your child and think about a parent getting the news that their child has been chosen and your heart just breaks for them.  I pray wholeheartedly that our little boy's biological parent knows how much this child will be loved and taken care of.  I pray that he knows we will do everything we can to preserve his culture and that we only want to be a blessing to our child and to his family in Ethiopia.  I pray that he knows we will be bringing him back to visit and will pray for and keep his family close to our hearts.

Welcoming a Family Home:  This weekend we will be welcoming home a family in our agency who is bringing their son home!   We are very close to many families in our agency which is beyond amazing because this means our child and theirs will not be far from each other here and will get to have play dates and reunions with children they once lived with in Ethiopia.  This weekend, the Castleberrys come home and we will be greeting them at the Tulsa airport.  We also will get to have dinner and talk with another family before the arrival.  This will be our first welcoming at an airport and I cannot wait to attend many more!

I will close with saying that in 19 days we will meet our son!!!!!   

WooooHooooo!!!!

We have a COURT DATE!!!

We are all in shock, my stomach is just settling down from hearing this news about 5 hrs ago!  We will be heading to Ethiopia in 1 MONTH!!!!!

Here's how it all went down:    I am in Kansas City for a continuing education course and our case worker was trying to call me all day, I didn't recognize the number and kept ignoring it since I was in class so she finally called my husband who is with me but was in the hotel room getting Jalen down for a nap.  My husband text me..."are you sitting down?", then the next one..."bad news, you can't go to Dallas now" (as I was planning on going for our agency's ET family reunion in April).  My heart was pounding, for sure it couldn't be a court date, number 1, our case worker always calls me and I didn't even think she had my husband's number, number 2, ummm we had only been submitted for a court date just a couple weeks ago...surely it would take 2 more months to find out!  Did someone die...was someone in the hospital, but how would he know they would be in the hospital until April, was someone flying in to see us, so many thoughts racing through my mind while I am in a room full of people being further educated on proper billing practices in Medicare!  Then the next text said "we will be in Ethiopia...court date set for April 18th..."   Seriously do you know how bad I wanted to scream and then burst out crying in the middle of this course?  I kept looking straight ahead and taking notes, withholding tears (people would have thought I was crazy) but my stomach was anxious so I took a  bathroom break and called our case worker, later realizing it was her calling since this morning, good thing I didn't take the call then, the whole day in class I would have been a mess, thankfully it was just the last hour :)

So now, we pray for next week for the birth parent interview, we pray for our boy's family and pray for everyone involved.  We will wait until next week to start making actual travel plans and now we have some things to get finished up, home study update, USCIS update, fundraising, planning for who will come stay with Jalen while we are gone, planning taking off from work, and just so much to do but it is all SO EXCITING!!!   All glory goes to God here, truly only HE could have planned all this out!!!  He really does show up when you LEAST expect it, this week has been beautiful and we have had no expectations of hearing news about a court date. Instead, my focus has been on thanking God for the beautiful days, my family, friends, allowing us to be on this journey and just everything in my life right now and then BAM, we get this news!!!

our family soon after hearing our court date! 

Emotionally Driven or Spiritually led?

We go to a network church of LifeChurch.tv and I have said it many times before but our pastor, Craig Groeschel definitely has a gift of being able to deliver a message that is very meaningful, yet entertaining and everyday you leave really being able to take something away from the experience that you can directly apply to your life.  A few weeks ago our lesson was on Samson, for 4 weeks we learned about Samson and it was mentioned over and again that this lesson was aimed for the guys, yet I and many other women took a lot away from it.  This lesson was going on while we were having to make one of the most difficult decisions I have EVER had to make in my life in our adoption process.  You would have thought this would not have been a help at all and I did at first. How can hearing about one of the  strongest men in the bible who disobeyed by being unclean and eating honey out of a lion’s carcass, drinking alcohol, and being with a women who would ultimately be the reason his hair was cut off and his strength was lost, help us in our adoption decisions???  Well in the teachings we were told about how when choices are made we have to determine if they are “emotionally driven OR spiritually led”.   This has almost become my daily reminder in everything I do.

When it comes to adopting a child, you cannot deny that a mother’s (or father’s) emotions are going to be heightened in everything that occurs and in all decisions to be made, I mean it is a child’s life we are dealing with.  In other decisions it may be easier to pray and feel led towards a certain direction but when it comes to making a decision between one child or another it is not that easy.  There is just no way a person’s emotions can be tamed in a decision like this especially when you are watching your own child and internalizing EVERY single aspect and realizing how each child in this world deserves everything your child gets because that is what they are, a child.  They may have developmental delays, attachment disorder, HIV, behavioral problems and many other “issues” but they are still a child, they are dealing with the cards they were dealt and they need help from responsible, loving adults to care for them and show them how to be a child and how to grow up to be a responsible and loving adult themselves.  Okay, I digress.  This is why I don’t keep up with my blog as much as I would like because I can’t seem to contain all my thoughts and emotions to stay focused…back on track now.

“Emotionally driven or spiritually led”…without going into detail this is what was the determining factor recently in our adoption and we went down the path of “spiritually led” and once we did I will say although our emotions didn’t change in the snap of our fingers, we did have a sense of peace, excitement, and overall just a feeling of this is what we were supposed to do.  Let me tell you, I am a VERY emotional person when it comes to children and orphans so as I am typing this I am still somewhat in disbelief that I was able to make that decision BUT I also know I didn’t do it on my own and COULDN”T for that matter and the only one who could was God and I am so thankful I know him and have him to turn to.  I kept thinking back to a few years ago when I knew who God was but didn’t really have a daily relationship with Him and above all didn’t know how to go to Him for help.  I still don’t of course and am learning just like the rest of us but I have been on both sides recently and know there is MUCH more peace in being spiritually led versus emotionally driven.

Now to bring this up to date to this past week’s lesson.  We are also blessed to have Pastor Steven Furtick as a guest every now and again as he is good friends with Pastor Craig.  He is doing our message on “Found Favor” this and next week.  Jason also got to attend a Seeds Conference in Tulsa last week with other people from our church, in which Pastor Furtick spoke at.  Yesterday he spoke about having God’s favor and who wouldn’t want that???  He also then asked if knowing that Mary had God’s favor which meant she would appear to be pregnant out of wedlock, give birth in a barn and later watch her son be crucified, would we still want that favor?  Good point.  I think we all want God’s favor, but are we all willing to go through the motions we have to as hard as they may be, in order to receive it?  Of course everything I hear immediately gets translated in my head to how it applies to adoption.  I can’t help it, it just does and you can ask my friends and especially those in my Life Group that get to hear this every day/week (side-note, thank you to all of you who love me enough to know this is my passion and let me keep on talking).  How many people say “we plan to adopt someday…”, “when the timing is right and when we have enough money to, we are going to look into adopting”, etc, etc.  People, let me just say this, adoption is not easy, it is expensive, emotionally and physically draining, it makes you change your life and rearrange your priorities, it may make you lose “friends” that don’t get it and it may mean you don’t get to go on a nice beach vacation for a couple years BUT above all it is the BEST choice you will EVER make!  The difficult times get accomplished and you look back and realize it wasn’t that bad and you can do anything now.  The expenses are there and they are overwhelming at first and then you realize your budgeting and worrying don’t matter because God has it covered and in the blink of an eye your expenses have been paid and your child is home with you.  Those “friends” you may have lost or been away from either come back into your life because they finally get it or they don’t and you realize they weren’t really your friend’s in the first place.  And finally that beach vacation you were planning on almost makes you sick to think about because instead you now get to daily watch your child grow, play and develop in a loving home versus trying to do all of that in an orphanage.  (another side-note:  please don’t think if I hear about you going on a beach vacation I am going to think less of you, I know vacations are well needed and great family bonding time).  We were reminded yesterday by Pastor Furtick that God’s favor is not favors from God.  We have personally experienced God's favor when we chose to follow His path in our adoption and I highly recommend it! In quoting pastor Furtick, "you do not achieve God’s favor, you receive it"…so who wants it?

To check out the message on Found Favor from Pastor StevenFurtick , watch it HERE and enjoy!

Shop and help us get to Ethiopia

Well after a short break, our fundraising continues.  Although every step of our adoption has been so exciting in its own way and every fundraiser we have done has gotten us one step further, this time I feel as if it is just that more special.  This time around we're not only fundraising to get ourselves to the next step but we now have seen our son's precious face, have heard all about him and cannot wait to get to him and that is what this round of fundraising is for!

There are 2 ways you can shop and help us raise money...

1.  Shop online at  our link through 147 Million Orphans and pick up some awesome apparel and more, that spreads the word about how many orphans there are in this world.  They are very generous and 30% of what you buy will get placed into our adoption fund.

2.  Spend $20 at our link through CoupAide to receive a $50 Restaurant.com to use at over 18,000 restaurants.  You spend $20, we get $10 of it and you get $50 worth of food! It's a win-win for everyone :)  One family has raised over $1000 just through this fundraiser alone and are still raising!

Thank you to the hundreds of people who have helped us get to where we are so far.  It may not seem like a lot but every dollar counts and as you can see by our fundraising thermometer, each and every one of your dollars has added up to bring us to our half-way point to be fully funded for this adoption!  We are humbled by this and just have to give all the praise and glory to God and for placing each and every one of you into our lives.