I’m done posting in arrears.
Today was an awesome day. At about 10:00AM (local time) this morning, two people from the staff from the Christian World Adoption Care Center (Dagne and Kassahun) came to pick us up to go see and take our kids. Amazingly enough I wasn’t nervous. I was more excited that anything. As soon as we got there, and entered through the gates, we saw several kids on the long concrete driveway/front yard. We see several kids on the left side, and they’re all acting excited. My eyes start looking for Fitsum and I see him right in front of us, standing next to a staff member. As soon as we stopped the car and attempted to get out of the car all these kids began running towards us. They look very excited to see us. One of the kids that Mark and Sheri adopted (Kassahun) came running right up to me… calling me Daddy… Daddy. A staff member came right up, and told him that I wasn’t his Daddy… and then pointed to his real Daddy. Then I saw Fitsum running towards me. It was more than what I expected. He seemed and looked so excited to see me, even though this was the first time we saw each other. I picked him and we hugged. It was as though we hadn’t seen each other for a very long time, and now we were reconnecting. Fitsum is a gift from God and today we claimed that gift into our family.

We stayed at the care center the entire morning. We played, we walked around and we ate lunch together. Lunch today was very typical and traditional Ethiopian food. I really enjoyed myself, not only got to spend time with Fitsum, but also getting to know most of the other kids as well as the staff members. Just by looking at his appearance Fitsum seems to be a very healthy child. He eats well (during lunch he went back for seconds, 2 times) and he seems very happy. He was very quiet for most of the day, but towards the end of the day he began to speak more; and he also became more active. One thing we found out about was that Kassahun (one of Mark and Sheri’s kids) and Fitsum are pretty good friends. They even slept together on the same bed for the last month or so. Mark, Sheri and I were quite to know that, because it would be pretty hard to see them go separate ways; and the amazing thing about all this is that both got adopted on the same, will live somewhat close to each other and will be going to the same Church. It’s been wonderful to see them play together, and enjoy each other.

It was between 8:00 – 8:30 PM when we put them to bed. I wasn’t sure how this was going play out. I got him ready to bed and when it was time to go to bed I pointed to the bed where he was supposed to sleep and asked to get in bed. He looked at me with a sad face and said “No”. I wasn’t quite sure what to do next, so… I pointed to my bed and asked him if he wanted to sleep in there. Again, he looked at me with another sad face and said “No”. Then, with the best of my English and sign language and asked where he wanted to sleep. He began to do what I was fearing… he pointed to the door and the translation of that was that he wanted to sleep with Kassahun. Now…, here am I… with a little boy I can’t communicate very well with, and now I’m thinking that it’s my turn to say “No”, but I can’t figure out a way to say it! Then I think about the flashlight I gave to him today (on behalf of Kara), and the light goes on in my head, and I begin to remember that the whole reason why Kara sent that flashlight for the first day was so that he wouldn’t be afraid. I totally felt proud of myself (don’t you honey?). And it totally worked. Using the flashlight I put him to bed, I got on the bed with him, I read to him, and then we played for little bit with the flashlight. It was amazing how incredibly comfortable he was. Kids need their mom, and Kara, I want to say that God doesn’t make mistakes. I’m not only glad that you’re my wife, but I’m also glad that you’re his Mommy.

It’s getting late around here. It’s about 12:30AM, and tomorrow I got to get up early. We’re doing some shopping in the morning and in the afternoon we’re going to the embassy to take care of the kids’ visas.