12/7/10
Sunday, Monday and TUESDAY!!!
Sunday morning we got up and went to the International Evangelical Church, which was very cool. Not Ethiopian at all, but cool. The pastor was a guy from North Carolina and it was a typical American service, but the crowd was not the typical crowd I’m used to seeing in church and I absolutely LOVED that! I think that’s what heaven is going to look like…all different colors singing in all different accents. It was great! After church we went to visit Audra for the whole afternoon. Such a sweetie! She was very bright eyed and seemed to really enjoy our attention.
Didn’t seem to mind being held all afternoon, which was fine with us! At 5pm, they had a little coffee ceremony. Nothing fancy…just gathered us and another family from Kentucky in a room where they where brewing coffee and then served it with popcorn sprinkled with sugar. SOOOO delicious! Then it was time for us to hand her over so they could get all the babies ready for bed. Great day!
Monday morning we paid a little visit to Faith Orphanage, the place that took Audra in and took good care of her. This was truly an experience I will never forget, even if I tried. It was a very nice place and they do the best they can, but seeing that many babies without families does awful things to your heart. I wanted all of them. I wanted to call everyone I know and tell them to send in an application b/c these babies need mommies and daddies. We need to do more. The director took us down to the kindergarten room, he said something and they all stood and sang us a welcome song. It was beautiful. Then they got back to business, which was a little boy leading the others in reciting the ABC’s, holding a stick and pointing to each letter on the wall. It was so amazing to listen to…Matt recorded it a little bit on his phone. Nothing better happen to that phone! We also gave that class suckers before we left…it was like we were handing them gold. After the orphanage, we went to Churchill Street and did some fun shopping! Got some scarves and purses and baby dresses for Audra and some knifes for the boys (not my choice of gifts…you can guess who bought those) and little toy balls with the Amharic alphabet on them. The huge downer, but reality, to the shopping trip was the little boy who begged me the whole time. He waited outside of each shop for us and kept asking for my shoes. My big size 11’s wouldn’t have done him any good. He held on to our driver’s car as we drove away. Wrecks you!
Tuesday (today) was our court appearance. Gosh, I was suddenly nervous. I hadn’t worried much about it b/c of all the blogs saying it was not big deal, but it suddenly became a very BIG deal! Our appointment was at 9am, we went into the judge (a beautiful, soft spoken women) at 9:45 and were done in about 3 minutes. It ended with her quietly saying “Congratulations, she’s yours.” Oh what a happy moment!!!
We celebrated by going to Kaldi’s Coffee (a Starbucks replica) for a mocha frapuccino and a mocha cappuccino…our driver had an orange Fanta. Ha! It was so fun! We had outside and just soaked up being in Addis Ababa, glowing from being new parents again.
After coffee, we changed and went for a visit with Audra for a couple of hours. We sat outside and took some really cute “you’re officially ours” pictures. Then she got sleepy, so I went and put her in her crib and we came back to the hotel to rest for a while.
Tonight we are going to Yod Abyssinia, which is a traditional Ethiopian restaurant. I’m pretty excited about it! Our driver is going to join us so he can tell us about everything on our plates…I’m kinda nervous about the food.
****The restaurant was amazing!!! Matt really enjoyed his food (shocker!)…tongue was his favorite meat, and there were a couple of things I thought were good, too. Not the meat, though. I actually enjoyed the coffee and popcorn the best.
This is Matt's plate. Mine was no where near this full!!
The dancers and the band were so cool! They played authentic instruments, had great singers who can do some crazy things with their vocal chords, and some dancers that can do things with there necks and shoulders that aren’t natural! At one point, the announcer said something about the next dance being from a certain region, which is the region Audra is from! I’m so glad our driver was with us b/c he recognized the name and said, “this is where your baby is from, so video this!” and we did! He was so helpful all week!
This is Dawit, our driver. I didn't know his name was Dawit until after he
gave us his business card when we left. Saturday when he introduced
himself, I thought he said David....so poor thing, I called him David all week.
He never corrected me. Hope we have him on our next trip!!
This has been a great trip and I’m not sure now I feel about leaving tomorrow. The people God calls here to do his work must be very tough skinned!
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