My sweet blessings

Everything He did, He did it for you!

I am so grateful for the sacrifice of Jesus, and all He did for me on the cross. I am thankful for His grace to still love me even when I feel unloveable and undeserving. I am so thankful that I don't have to perform for Him or earn His love. He offers it unconditionally, and loves me right where I am. His presence is the most beautiful place I have been and I am thankful beyond words I have a relationship with Him. It has been almost 13 years since I gave my whole heart to Jesus. I remember every detail just as if it were yesterday. Without Him in my life I wouldn't be where I am today. I wouldn't have the life I get to live today. Taking risks for Him and going places and doing things I would never had the courage to do on my own is such a gift.

For example standing in front of the Nile River at the Gorge in Ethiopia with our adopted son!!!! I am convinced we would not have taken this risk without Him. What a blessing! His plans are far greater than anything we could ever dream on our own.


This life you have gifted us with, Lord, is full and rich, and we thank you for your presence in our life. You are beautiful, Lord and we celebrate you and your sacrifice you made for us this Easter. We celebrate this life we get to live on Earth and the one we get to spend in Eternity forever in your presence!



Please take the time to watch this short video clip and the sacrifice He made for YOU. His love for YOU is so great! Greater and deeper than you can ever imagine. I am sure as powerful as this video is, it pales in comparison to what it was really like that day. As you watch, remember that He loves you so much now....right where you are, no matter what, so much so that He did this for YOU.

Pushing Through

In my last post I mentioned that everything was great! That is so true. Everything is great. We have our son home safe and sound. His smile brightens our day everyday. Honestly our life without him in it would be unimaginable now. He is ours forever and we are so grateful.
I would like to say out loud that it's not always rosy. These past couple weeks have brought new challenges. I guess you could say the honeymoon stage is over for our little man. He is now comfortable with all of us and is totally himself. For the most part, he is awesome! He has such a vibrant personality. Totally talkative and loud, and smiling and full of joy. But in him being himself with us now, we have noticed some behavior patterns that can make life a little difficult on us at times. At first when we noticed it, our thoughts were.... 'Wow, his nannies must have just spoiled him a bit.' He is so darn cute and we could see how that would be easy. We had seen firsthand how loved he and all the other children were by these precious nannies. But as time went on, we realized more and more that these are patterns that he learned to fight for attention or fight for what he wanted or needed. He has never had 2 parents to give him what he has needed. Although the care he received was extraordinary as far as orphan care goes, it just wasn't what he truly needed. It wasn't the constant reassurance, encouragement and undivided attention each child deserves and needs that can only come from having a mom and dad. He had been in constant competition his whole life with all the other cuties who were thirsty for attention. Because of this, some bad habits were formed. As you can imagine, when a group of very young kids are all fighting for that attention and love, or whatever else they are needing at the time, they do whatever it takes to get it. For example, by screaming until they are noticed, and screaming louder until they get what they want. Sometimes maybe even tackling each other and biting or hitting to get that toy or food they want.
These are a couple of things we have been experiencing with our guy. It has been quite challenging at times to say the least. But the good thing is that Josiah is a responding so well when he is disciplined and reaffirmed with love. What we have found to be most effective is anytime he starts to demand something by whining or screaming, we sit him on a chair in time out/in until he is done. I then sit down and look in his eyes and explain to him that he can't do whatever it was he was doing, and we hug it out. The first time we tried this, we were amazed. He totally sat there and acted like he knew what he was suppose to do, like he had done it before. We wonder if time out/in was used by his nannies. To say the least it is very effective for him. What we have had to do is make sure we are extremely consistent with him in doing this when we notice that behavior beginning. Some days it means frequently putting him in time out/in, and me pulling my hair out (lol), and other days he does great. I mentioned in my last post how smart and quick he is at learning. He completely understands me now when he starts to misbehave and I say "Josiah, do you want to go sit on your chair?" He says, "no" and immediately turns the tears off. The first time he did this was just a few days ago, and it caught me off guard a bit at how quickly he understood. I think that has amazed me more than anything...how much he has learned and can understand and speak so soon at such a young age.
He is such a great boy! It is not a matter of him being "spoiled." It is merely him acting the only way he has ever known and having to re-learn new ways to interact with his new family. With this has come many tears from me and him, and some trying days spent in prayer, but we are learning and growing together. God is continually molding me and Aaron and our kids. He is opening our eyes to the reality of the life our son has had to live without a mom and a dad. But he is redeeming that lost time everyday as we push through the rough days.
It is challenging, but I am honored God chose us worthy to parent this precious boy! What a joy he and our girls are to us!

Things are great!

Well, as it turns out, my kiddos are sleeping in today so this gives me a little bit of time to update on how life is over here.
I will start out by saying that we couldn't have asked for a better transition time. God has blessed us during this time so much; it is incredible. It feels as though we have had Josiah Moti from day 1. It didn't take long at all for our guy to feel at home, and he is living up to his name. He is a little king in this house. His sisters spoil him like crazy, as expected.
The day we were able to pick our son up in Ethiopia was January 2, 2012. That is what everyone in the adoption world calls his "gotcha day." Biniam picked us up from our guest house and drove us to the Thomas Center. I couldn't help myself and cried the whole way there. I can't even put into words what Aaron and I were feeling in this moment. Let's just say it was long awaited and anticipated and felt like a dream to actually be happening.
When we arrived they immediately brought him to us. He was much bigger (and rounder..lol) than the last time we had seen him. The nurse informed us that he had been walking for 2 weeks then, and I held out my arms for him to come to me, and he did. Then he walked to Aaron. He showed off for a while walking back and forth between us as we celebrated his walking success. There weren't any tears from him, just smiles. We changed his clothes before leaving and quickly realized everything we packed for him was too small. We squeezed him in his clothes, and got ready to leave. You could tell as we were leaving that he was a little confused and became very quiet, and shut down for a bit. He was quiet until we reached our guest house and as soon as we sat down he opened up and started playing and laughing. We learned in our adoption training classes that adopted children will usually intially attach to one of the parents over the other. Of course in my mind I knew it would be me. I am the loving, nurturing one. I give the best cuddles and kisses and hugs. But that didn't happen in our case. Josiah wasn't interested in the hugs and cuddles, he was more interested in playful dad. Dad was a ton of fun, and he attached to Aaron right away. They bonded over peek-a-boo, tickles, and drums. During our stay in Ethiopia it was fine. It wasn't as if he disliked me. He would give me kisses and smile and be playful with me, but just needed daddy holding him. It was a little unexpected and at times difficult for me, but it was good he loved Aaron so much. Who could blame him, Aaron is pretty great! To be very honest it got extremely hard on the plane ride home. When Aaron needed a break from holding him, Josiah would scream his head off when handed to me. Aaron was tired and I was super frustrated because I so badly wanted to hold and cuddle this child I had been praying for and fighting for so long. Not to mention, we were all exhausted as could be. It was a loooooooooooong ride home to say the least.
Being back home made everything so much easier. It didn't take no time until Josiah had warmed up to me too. The Lord really showed me that it was such a blessing that he attached to Aaron first, because Aaron works a lot and isn't home with him near as much as I am. So me and my little man have had tons of alone time to bond and he still goes bananas when daddy walks in the door home from work. I am the one who puts him to bed every night and I rock him in the glider and give him a cup of milk before laying him down. 3 weeks ago, he would push off of me and not let me cuddle him. Now he cuddles, and lays in my arms for a good while. He is very lovey and kissy kissy. He gives me a million kisses a day. The other day I was bending over to put my socks on and I felt this little kiss on the back of my leg, and I looked down and there he was with that big grin looking up at me, and as clear as day Josiah says,"I lu lue."(I love you). Not only is he sweet, he is so smart. I realize every parent thinks their child is smart, but he really is so stinkin smart. We went to dinner with our Ethiopian friends last week and they were talking to him in Amharic and he was understanding and responding to everything they were telling him. Also, he says a ton of English words already and uses the correct context as well. Mind you, he has only been home 5 weeks. Here are few words he is saying: "momma, daddy, Aubrey, Alyssa, Nanny, Nana, Mamaw, dog (ruff,ruff), Lucy, eat, thank you, I love you, go, no no, bye bye, cookie, gone gone, hi, hello, shoes, ow." He also still uses numerous Amharic words to get what he wants...such as "Dabo" (bread) motta, motta (night, night), he says this often when he is sleepy, "Nah"(come), and "taio" (stop). And his words are very clear. We have had a couple friends amazed at how much and how clear he speaks for a 17-month old.
We were all sitting in the living room one night and Aaron expressed how odd it was that it was already so normal and comfortbale feeling and it seems like Josiah has been here all along. A lot of adoptive parents told us that "God will make up for the lost time it took in getting him home." I never understood that until now. It is just amazing how this little guy fits so comfortably into our family. Our oldest daughter, Alyssa, is so over-the-moon in love with Josiah. She cannot keep her hands off of him. At first I think she got on his last nerve, but now, he LOVES her. She has him spoiled and when we gets told no or falls down and gets hurt, he runs to Alyssa for comforting kisses, and she eats it up. She told me last night, "Mom, you picked the right kid to adopt for our family." I told her that God had led us to him and chose us to be Josiah's family. And she said," Well, God picked the right kid for our family. I just love him so much. He is so cute and sweet,and I just love him. He is the cutest kid ever." She goes on and on and on about her brother and oftentimes I have to remind her to show her little sister some love too. I guess she was going on a little too much about him at school, because one of her friends told her one day to "stop bragging all the time about your brother. It's not nice to brag." HA! I told her it was ok to be proud and talk about him. We waited a long time to have bragging rights to this boy, so brag away. LOL!
Aubrey also loves Josiah, but she doesn't need to be in his face 24/7 like big sis. And sometimes little brother grates on her nerves when she is playing Barbies and he toddles along and tries to take them from her. I hear about a million times a day "STOP IT SUSIAH!" (that is how Aubrey pronounces Josiah) it is too funny and cute!
Although there were a couple minor things that were a little difficult the first couple weeks, all in all, we couldn't have asked for a better transition time. Josiah is as happy-go-lucky, smiling, and laid-back as they come. He's a dream when grocery shopping. Just sits there and takes it all in, and when he's down walking in public he hardly leaves my side, unlike his 2 sisters that would take off the second I looked away. We had to chain them to the grocery cart when we were out and about or they were gone. He just stays right beside us when we are out, and waves hi to passers-by. He is definitely a charmer and loves attention.
We are totally in love with this beautiful little boy God trusted us with.

Happy Birthday Aubrey!

Today is my sweet Aubrey's 4th birthday!
Aubrey is my precious lovey, lovey, child. She hands out as many hugs and kisses as we want, and loves to tell me and Aaron how great we are all the time. "Mom, you are the best mom ever." or "Dad, you are the best dad in the world." She is a great big sister to her new brother and thinks her big sister, Alyssa hung the moon. She loves to do artistic things such as sculpting play-doh, painting and coloring, and making crafts and helping momma bake. Her favorite toys right now are Barbies and babies. She is my little momma, and my little romantic. She loves to see daddy give momma kisses and asks us to kiss all the time :) A funny thing she has been telling me lately is that she wants to get married. When I ask her to who, she tells me she is going to marry Eli. Eli is a boy that she goes to school and church with. Don't worry, we got our eye on Eli ;) lol!
Aubrey is precious, precious and melts my heart with her big, round blue eyes, her sweet little grin, and her tiny freckles across her nose. She is pretty great and I am so blessed to be her momma. She blesses our family everyday! LOVE THIS GIRL!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY AUBREY!!!!!

Some ugly truth!

Now that we have our heads on straight again and are home and settled into our routine I thought I may start to share a bit about what has been going on over here. I think now that Josiah is home I can be a bit more open about everything and why it took so long getting him home. It has taken me a while to recover from the battle of bringing him home, and I haven't been in a place of being ready to blog. When I am overwhelmed I tend to go in shut-down mode and turn everything off for a while. The last months of trying to get our guy home was so intense and overwhelmingly stressful. The US Embassy sent our son's case to USCIS for further review. When I emailed the US Embassy and asked them exactly what was missing from our son's file, they gave me a very vague answer and told me that they were not satisfied with the police officer's phone interview. That is all they said, nothing more or nothing less, even when I bolded my question asking them the specifics. At this point we were sent all of our son's documents by our agency and went over them with a fine tooth comb. There wasn't a thing in his files that would make anyone raise an eyebrow of suspicion. He was abandoned with FOUR WITNESS MATCHING TESTIMONIES AND A MATCHING POLICE TESTIMONY. Ads had been hung in his village more than once for long periods of time to see if anyone in my son's village knew anything about him, and no one ever stepped forward. Once our son's case reached USCIS we were VERY confindent that they would clear his case because they told us they only needed 51% proof that our son was indeed an orphan. Waiting the 2 weeks for them to process the 65 original cases that were sent to them was agonizing. Sleep was lost EVERY night as we stalked our email for an answer. I felt half-crazy during this time. We waited and waited and waited until we knew that the team had left and were finished, and we were the ONLY ones out of all the families that didn't have an answer. I had to call someone with USCIS and tell them we hadn't received an email, and was concerned that our email was incorrect in their system (FOR THE 4TH TIME..seriously....no lie 4 times between the embassy and USCIS). Of course it was still wrong in their system and the highly important information regarding our son's fate was sent to the wrong email address AGAIN! Around 6:00 pm that night we received the notice that they were again denying our son's visa and had an "RFE"( Request Further Evidence) notice attached to the email. As I stated earlier, we had gone over our son's documents with a fine-tooth comb as did our agency, and we were all dumbfounded to receive the RFE. When we opened it and read what it stated we could not believe our eyes. My immediate thought was to call USCIS and explain to them this horrible error and they would reverse the RFE (yeah right!) I did just that in a panic and was basically told it would be best to hire an attoreny to process our RFE. I was in denial of this because I kept thinking that our son's case was an easy fix, and it was absurd to have to hire an attorney for such a dumb mistake on the US Embassy's part. I was wrong, and we were trapped. No one would listen at this point until we jumped through all the hoops in getting this RFE response turned in. We had never felt so helpless than we did at this point.
The very absurd reason for us receiving our RFE was because our son had a last name listed on his orphanage paperwork. In Ethiopia a child is given the last name of the birthfather's first name, UNLESS THEY ARE FOUND ABANDONED, and then, in many cases, they are given the last name of the village/city they are found in, which was what happened in my son's case. The woman who found him was the one who named him and gave him a last name of the village he was found in. ANYONE working in this culture should know that this is customary and very common for them to do this in abandonment cases, but those working at the US embassy in Addis Ababa did not. In their incompetency, they stated that since our son had a last name that there must be a birth father out there searching for his son and our agency must have been keeping this information from us. We were to do an ivestigation to find this man and see if he wanted his son. WHAT???? Are my eyes deceiving me? Is this really what we received our RFE for? That's not all folks, it gets even more ridiculous! It also stated that the police interview (as mentioned above) conducted by the US embassy did not match the 4 witness's testimonies. When our agency started to dig into our investigation for the RFE response, they discovered that the policeman that was interviewed by the US Embassy was not from our son's village. NOBODY had heard of him. Upon further investigation they discovered this police officer wasn't even in our son's jurisdiction. To this day, we don't know if the US Embassy mixed our son's files up with another child's files or even if this police interview actually took place and this man actually exists.
So all said and done, our son is home. We incurred $4200.00 in unncessary attorney fees to prove our son's case against the dumb errors on the part of our own government, whom we pay our tax dollars to. So basically we paid them to put us through this hell. This should have never happened. Our son should have been home in September 2011 but because of having been put through this ridiculous and unnecessary mess we brought him home in January 2012. We lost precious time with him and these months of conducting these additional investigations to prove our son's case were agonizing! It was a daily fight just to survive our days. We had no extra energy for anything other than taking care of our girls and making it through our day. I don't think one day went by in the months of October, November and December that I wasn't in tears. It was taking a toll on our family. It was exhausting emotionally and physically, and spiritually we felt worn out. I wrestled with God MANY days on why we were having to go through this. I knew for some reason He allowed us to walk through this, and I honestly was angry at Him for allowing it. I personally was in a very low, dark place and my sweet husband was doing his best to be supportive and strong for us, and deal in his own way and balance work on top of that. I am so thankful for my sweet Aaron who is strong in the Lord...so thankful! Having Josiah home has lifted that heaviness and burden. The first Monday having him home, I drove Alyssa to school. After dropping her off it was just me and God in the car, and the realization of that burden being gone hit me. I broke down and bawled like a baby. It was the loudest, hardest cry I think I have EVER cried and I just felt a releasing of all the built up stress I had carried for so long. I cried to the Lord and asked Him to forgive me for being angry with him, and not walking through the last leg of our adoption with more grace or faith. I felt the Lord hugging me and melting away all the pain and guilt of anger. It was freedom, and it felt so good. Since then my girls have felt that freedom and have said over and over "I am so glad Josiah is finally home." Alyssa said it was great that I wasn't crying everyday. I think for the past 2 weeks daily I have been told by one or both how glad they are to have their brother home. He has brought a new joy to our home. Everything just feels right again, and it is amazing how normal everything feels with him being here already. We were beyond ready to have him home and the Lord had prepared out hearts and his. It's been sweet.
Now I haven't shared all this about our troubles with the Embassy out of bitterness or anger, although, I was in that place for a while, I shared this to tell people the truth, and what WE PERSONALLY expereiced. There are a lot of rumors going around about all the corruption within adoption agencies associated with Ethiopian adoptions. I want to state my opinion and say don't always believe what you hear. Corruption is a strong word, and I don't believe for one minute that is true to the grand extent at which the US embassy is claiming. I believe there is a bigger politcal HAGUE agenda, and if they don't get what they want, they are going to try and shut the country down or suspend it to force this agenda. I believe this is why we are seeing so much junk going on within our own government right now in regards to Ethiopian adoptions. Let's face the reality that in any international adoption, it is going to be complicated. There are cultural differences to work through, language and translation issues, and 2 different governments working together. One government does things totally different than the other. In conducting our own investigations in our son's case, even with as simple and clear cut of a case our son had, the reality of these cultural and language barriers, not to mention, technological mishaps was enough to make me want to pull my hair out daily. If it wasn't a translation error or not specific enough communication, it was fax machines not working or phone lines being down. What was a simple request in my mind, was a big ordeal to get in Ethiopia, because of all mentioned above. It is very difficult to get the story straight. I believe this needs work. We do need our children's stories straight absolutely. Moreover, I don't believe this is corruption. Corruption in my mind would be a family or agency from the US directly offering an Ethiopian family money in exchange for their child. There has been talk of this, but I have seen no proof, just talk. To me this seems like an absurd theory given that UNICEF themselves claimed there to be 5 million orphans in Ethiopia in 2010. Why would anyone need to offer families money directly for their child when orphangages in Ethiopia are overflowing with children who need families, and so many children without familes are living on the streets to fend for themselves? And why does our government have to keep talking down on the Ethiopian government. A friend put it best when she stated " Instead of bad mouthing Ethiopia, UNICEF and the U.S. should be applauding the Ethiopian government for wishing a better life for their most marginalized citizens."
Another friend of mine also made a great point about all the "trafficking" going on in saying if agencies were doing this, how would they benefit? Think of it...here let me give you all this money for your child so I can in turn care for them, feed, and clothe them for the next 1-2 years with the little to no resources we have available to do so with. That rumor just doesn't logically make sense to me at all. If you look at past countries who have shut down there is always the same pattern. The state department will cry "fraud" and all these stories of corruption will surface. Then comes all the ruckus of cases being given RFE's, and lots of unnecsary heartache for families and children. There will be enormous amounts of cases under review to prove they are digging to prove all this corruption that doesn't exist for the most part. In the end, the reality of all this is that 99% of cases ARE proven to be orphans and they all evetually do come home. Oh sure, I am not saying there isn't some corruption. There is corruption everywhere in every system. I am just saying I do not believe it to the extent they are claiming. I find it ridiculous. In the meantime, because of all the ruckus, people start to believe that there must be all this fraud and the coutry's adoptions are all corrupt and unethical. They jump on that bandwagon and essentially have a hand at helping to shut the country down to US adoptions. Now these are all my own opinions from our adoption expereice, but I personally believe that if Ethiopia were HAGUE accredited this would not be happening. The HAGUE agreement was initially instituted to help stop child trafficking. Child trafficking indeed does take place all over the world, even in the U.S., but it is very little associated with international adoptions. The state department and UNICEF should focus their money and energy on prostitution rings in Mexico, Cambodia, or India where human/child trafficking is rampid. And again I think they are claiming all these false cries of fraud and corruption to convince the congressional panel that the HAGUE agreement is needed in Ethiopia, and suspending or shutting the country down will force the Ethiopian government to join the HAGUE agreement, which they neither want nor can afford. I think our testimonies of the hell we had to endure on behalf of the US Embassy needs to be told to the congressional panel as well. I whole-heartedly believe we endured what we did with this RFE because we were in the process of our adoption at the wrong time... a time where beaurocracy got in the way and our own government decided to pick a few to try and prove a point and force an agenda. Sad but true.
I believe the only way Ethiopia will stay open to US adoptions is to convince our lawmakers that HAGUE should be thrown out. It may have started out as a good thing in the beginning with good intentions, but has only proven to cause heartache to American families adopting and the adoptive children. I hope no other family has to endure the heartaches and financial burden our family has faced at the hand of the state dept's political agenda. I am writing all this now, not out of bitterness, but in hopes that eyes will be opened to the reality of what is really going on and people will write their lawmakers and try and convince them HAGUE should be thrown out. Also I would like to state that I love my country and am so blessed to be an American citizen. I just think it is unfortunate that our family had to suffer at the hands of a certain branch of our government, with no apologies at all. Please be fighting in prayer for this precious country and the millions of orphans that all deserve a chance at being adopted. I believe through prayer political agendas don't stand a chance against God's agenda to set the lonely in families. I also believe we need to do more than just pray. FAITH TAKES ACTION!!!!! Please take action with us and the other families and write to your lawmakers about how the HAGUE Agreement needs to be thrown out.

Family of 5!!!!

Finally together forever!