We're Baaaaaack!

This is a post I wrote while in Ethiopia but wasn't able to post because of poor internet connectivity. I will write more later!

Where to begin? First of all, I want to say that God is the master orchestrator. Last night when we landed in Addis Ababa, I was brought to tears when the tires touched down. I just felt so in awe of the experience and what God had in store for us. I was nervous about what awaited us, but overall felt that God wouldn’t have brought us this far for no reason! We arrived at our guest house late last night, and we all managed to sleep until the roosters/call to prayer/dog barking woke us. We all bathed as well as we could (water trickles out and is either freezing or scalding), and then went downstairs for breakfast. We were met by a man and his young daughter and we got to talking and he said he was a missionary. We got to talking a bit more and then his wife came in and he introduced her and said her name was Jervaun. I was just overwhelmed in that moment as many months ago I read in the Free Methodist magazine Light and Life about this family from CA that was moving to Ethiopia to do missionary work. I ripped their photo and write up out of the magazine and taped it up on the wall. I searched online for them based on the info I had, but couldn’t find them. So I just sort of gave up. Well, this family is staying here at our guest home. We ate breakfast with them and it felt like we were with family. They are Tim, Jervaun, Juliette, and Timmy Trier. They are just awesome people and we prayed this morning at breakfast and just thanked God for bringing our families together in such an intentional, obvious way. We don’t know what God intends for us to do, but we know He isn’t finished with us yet!
After this amazing reminder of God’s attentive, faithful love, all of my nerves about meeting Jonas were gone. I knew this was God’s plan without a doubt. I just felt joyful. We drove out to the foster care center where Jonas has been living since the beginning of May. David and I are just enthralled by everything we see when we are traveling around the city. There are people living in corrugated tin shacks. Some people have cement block homes but we are talking tiny homes. No running water, no electricity. We were struck by how dark it was when we were driving to the guest house last night from the airport. The street lights weren’t on. They have rolling black outs during the day and at night and we were in the part of town that was blacked out last night. Thankfully we did have electricity when we got to the guest house. We are up on the top floor of the guest home, so we can see over the town.
This morning we watched as a man herded a large herd of sheep or goats up the street. They just went around the cars. Driving to the foster care center we saw lots more goatherds and then we saw two donkeys running around the street and then they casually started grazing alongside the road. We also saw cattle. The pollution is very bad; the environmental disaster here is so apparent. We just keep on saying over and over that we truly have nothing to complain about. These people have no luxuries at all. Most do not have basic necessities. My heart breaks because there is no future for most of these people. Yet I know God loves these people, so I know there is hope. The song “God of this City” has been running through my head, even before we landed. “You’re the God of this city, you’re the God of this nation, you are. There is no one like our God. Greater things are yet to come, greater things are still to be done in this city…”
So now to THE BABY! Oh my goodness he is even more gorgeous in person!!!! Those cheeks that we all wanted to take a bite out of are delicious! He is very happy and giggles quite a bit. The first person to make him laugh was Lucy and this was when he was laying on the bed and she was jumping on it almost landing on his head. That was my first taste of, “Yes, he is a boy. He thinks potential bodily harm is funny.” Anyway, I made sure Lucy didn’t hurt him and they continued playing on the bed as I videotaped them. He is just enthralled with her and really enjoyed watching everything she was doing.
He fell asleep in the car on the way home from the foster care center, and it was so surreal traveling with my TWO kids. It was so sweet having my beautiful baby boy asleep in my arms with my gorgeous girl by my side.
Two observations about Jonas thus far: 1) The child can eat. I mean he can eat Lucy under the table no problem. 2) He sucks two fingers on his left hand just like his cousin Patrick. How cute is that? He even makes the little sucking noises that Patrick made. Somehow this was comforting to me, almost like it was yet another sign from God that this child was meant for us.