Today Has Finally Come!!!

Today is the day we have been waiting for for a VERY long time. We are leaving today to fly to Ethiopia!!! Many people have asked how long it will take us and what the details are. So here you go:
Wednesday, March 23rd
9am leave for airport
12pm fly to Minneapolis, MN
4pm fly to Amsterdam

Thursday, March 24th
3:30am fly to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
arrive in Addis Ababa at 2pm IL time (10 pm Ethiopia time)

Yes that is 26 hours from when our 1st flight leaves and our last flight lands.

We will then go to our Guest House and try (yeah right) to get some sleep and meet Jacob on Friday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(Just in case there are any creeps reading this we have someone staying at our house)

As we start on this leg of the journey we are asking for some prayers. I'm sure there are many more things we need prayer for, but here are a few things that I can think of:
-safe travel and no sickness on plane (thats just uncomfortable for everyone :) )
-our luggage makes it (nervous about this)
-we can sleep when we are supposed to (not sleeping much now and heard its hard to sleep in Ethiopia with howling dogs and chanting outside the windows)
-our MEETCHA Day with Jacob!!!! We can't wait to get this precious boy in OUR arms!!!!
-for MOWYCA to get letters written so families can pass court
-March 31st-our court date- we will be going in front of a judge to state our intent to adopt; all the papers need to be there and signed for us to pass court
-health and safety in Ethiopia. We plan to stay until we are cleared to bring Jacob home. We really hope that it is sooner rather than later!! We are also worried about the food a little bit. We brought some meals and have heard of some other places to go to as well.
-that we start to bond with Jacob right away and he is comfortable with us
-us as we start this new journey of becoming parents, we want to do the best we can to raise Jacob in a Christian and loving home. We want Jacob to grow up to love The Lord.
-that we have opportunities to be the hands and feet of Jesus to others while in Ethiopia

Our small group just finished studying the book of James. This really stuck out to me:
James 5:16 ".....The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective."

Prayer works and we are so thankful we have many prayer warriors along with us on this journey!!
A big thank you to each person that has helped us on some part of this journey. Your prayers, love, and support has helped us get to this day. Thank you just isn't enough, you helped us get to our son. The child God had picked out for us since the beginning of time!!!!!

Showered in Love!!

On Sunday, some of my dearest friends showered us in LOVE!!!! My friends and church family came together (about 50 women in all) to show their love and support for Jacob, us, and our adoption! It was so nice to see so many friends just days before we leave!! I got many hugs and promises of prayers for our journey, which means the world to me!!

At church, before the shower, our church family prayed over us. Pastor really blessed us with his prayer!! Pastor prayed for safety, health, and a speedy process, etc. But he ended the prayer by praying for Jacob to grow to love the Lord, and that is certainly the biggest responsibility about being a parent. It is our greatest desire to have Jacob grow up with faith in God and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I was humbled and amazed when I turned around after the prayer to see just how many people love us and are covering our trip and Jacob in prayer. Needless to say, I shed some happy and humbled tears!!

Here are the ladies responsible for the WONDERFUL day!!

Larcy, Marie, me, Angie, and Tanya

Larcy and Marie are pregnant and Tanya has a baby just a little bit older than Jacob. I can't wait for all our kids to grow up together!! Angie's girls are a little bit older, so they might be our babysitters one day!!

My sister Amy, niece Kylie, and my Mom came up for the day too!!

Here is Megan Snyder, another AWAA adoptive mama!! She lives only 45 minutes away and we got our referrals on the same day!! She will be coming to meet her 4 year old daughter the week after we get to Ethiopia!! I have been blessed by our friendship and so happy we live close to each other!!
Jacob is one very spoiled boy already, look at all these gifts. And yes, I really opened them all in front of 50 pairs of eyes watching me. It took about an hour, I really hope people weren't bored. I am very thankful for all the love and support shown in many ways!!

I had Angie's daughters help me so I wasn't sitting up there by myself!!

Here is the yummy cake!!


Many friends and family also brought or have given us donations to take to the orphanages in Ethiopia. We have 2 suitcases full of wipes, diaper rash cream, infant vitamins, crocs, soccer balls, play dough, 1,200 pencils and several other items that we can't wait to deliver to people of places that we meet! Thank you to all of you!!

From the Mouths of First Graders

I teach Reading Recovery to first graders, along with some small group Reading groups as well. My excitement about Jacob and going to Ethiopia, has bubbled over into them. I love it!! Here are some things I heard some 1st graders last week:

"I can't wait until you go and get Jacob!"

"Springbreak is coming up. Ohhhhhhh! Mrs. Mowen gets to go get Jacob on Springbreak!"

As they he was picking a book from my shelf, he said "Do you think Jacob can read this?"

Hahahaha! I love that Jacob has already become a part of our daily conversations around here!!! All three first grade classes drew my pictures or wrote us a letter about going to meet Jacob. Here are a few of my favorites! (again sorry I can't figure out how to rotate the pictures)

I don't think I will be wearing this fancy dress when I meet Jacob, but it's still cute!!

I love this one. This kid drew Jacob waiting in a building for us! I even have my purple purse!!

I love how the students drew Jacob with brown skin and me and Brad with tan skin. This was unprompted, and I thought very observant from a 6 year old!

Most the letters were about like this: bring pictures of animals and the baby! haha

Again animals and baby in the pictures!!

I really hope that we are back by the end of the school year. The students can't wait to meet Jacob and I can't wait to introduce him to all of them too!!

THIS WEEK!!!!

This is the week that WE.WILL.MEET.OUR.SON!!!!!!!!!! We started this journey in November 2009, now 17 months later we will be meeting OUR SON!!! I don't even know how to describe all the things I am feeling. Excited, anxious, nervous, emotional, happy, but mostly SO STINKIN' EXCITED!!!! It's almost surreal. We have been waiting so long and dreaming about our Meetcha Day for a long time, its hard to believe that Friday is the day!!!
We have been busy finishing up many things this past week or two. Lots of packing and repacking. Thankfully Brads parents are coming along for the first 11 days, so we can use some of their suitcase space. So far we have 6 large suitcases, 4 carry on suitcase, and 3 personal bags packed. With all the donations we've received recently from Brads school and friends, we are thinking that we might take one more large suitcase, and just have to pay the extra luggage fee.
Today my friends are having a shower for me at our church. I'm so excited that our last few days here will be filled with love and fun with our family and friends!

Ethiopia Update

Keep praying for MOWA, now MOWCYA, it seems that the changes will be good, eventually. We aren't sure how the next couple of weeks will pan out, but it sounds like they will be catching up as soon as possible with writing the letters. With our court date in 2 weeks from today, we might be caught in a little of this, but it will all work out. In the end, God is in control!! So I don't need to worry!!

Here was the email we got from our agency:

We are writing to update you on the current situation in Ethiopia. While meetings between Ethiopian government officials continue, we have seen positive steps. Within MOWA, there have been significant and positive personnel changes which have resulted in overall staff turnover and changes in the adoption unit. This unit is now called the Ministry of Women, Children and Youth Affairs (MOWCYA). We are hopeful and expectant that the new leadership will not only support processing an adequate number of favorable recommendation letters, but also implement policies that will best serve the children. Due to the staffing changes, we anticipate much transition over the next few weeks. However, we expect that once everyone is settled into their new positions, MOWCYA will work to process a higher number of recommendation letters than they currently are able to process.

We have continued to receive optimistic feedback and have seen how the Ethiopian government is very committed to adoption. I hope this information is an encouragement to your family. We will continue to update your family with any confirmed information we receive.



Another adoption agency posted today......
Today we want to update you on the feedback we received yesterday from our foreign staff in Ethiopia, which was confirmed in a discussion with our adoption colleagues in a Joint Council caucus call later in the day.
At this time, all Foreign Staff on the ground in Ethiopia are reporting that MOWA has completed their staffing changes and are now currently working at full capacity to complete those adoption cases currently re-scheduled or assigned a court appointment through the courts of Addis Ababa. Our staff believe this to be around 800 cases they are working at full force to complete with no restrictions on the number of cases processed each day. This is great news! We are thrilled to hear these drastic changes do not seem to be going into full effect.
We are also pleased to report that for new cases moving forward; it appears the original changes proposed by MOWA will not be implemented to the degree of 5 cases a day. At this time it is unknown whether or not MOWA will issue a formal statement regarding how they will process cases in the future, but from all discussions it will not be a drastic decrease from before. Through the continued work, meetings, and advocacy of many Foreign Staff members in Ethiopia, it appears any future changes within the case processing for MOWA will avoid sweeping and disproportionate alterations to the number of cases processed each day.

Newspaper Article About Brad and Churchill Students

The students at Brads school have been collecting pens, pencils, and a few other school supplies for us to take to Ethiopia. The students also had the opportunity to "Jam the Jug" with change to be donated to an Ethiopian orphanage too. One day the students could pay 50 cents to wear a hat to school. So far they have collected over 1,000 pens and pencils and are still filling the jug up with loose change. It so neat to hear students want to help and to hear their excitement for our upcoming trip. The local newspaper went to their school yesterday to interview Brad and some of the students. Here's a link to the article

http://www.galesburg.com/newsnow/x2011272258/Churchill-Jr-High-class-collects-to-help-Ethiopian-orphans

Packing, Unpacking, and Repacking

First, thank you for the prayers! We were fingerprinted last Wednesday! The situation in Ethiopia is finalized yet, but it sounds like it won't be as bad as we first heard. But please continue to pray for MOWA and the Ethiopian officials and that they do their part in fulfilling God's will for these orphans.

We have been packing, unpacking, and repacking for the last 3 weeks. Once we received a court date we started packing. We packed 2 suitcases full of food, diapers, and wipes. Another suitcase has mostly formula and baby cereal, with a few other things crammed in there. Since we plan to stay until we can bring Jacob home, we need to bring everything we will need for us and for Jacob for our stay. Some items are hard (or impossible) to find in Ethiopia or they are just very expensive. We also packed all of Jacob's clothes, then we got a precious video of him and they looked at his clothes and said he was already in 6-9 month clothes (he was only 2 1/2 months at the time). So we unpacked all the 3-6 clothes we had for him, and packed 6-9 month clothes with a few 9-12 month things. I figured it was better to bring clothes too big, than too small. All that we have left to pack is our clothes. I think we will be doing that in the next 2 days. So this weekend we can relax with our friends that are coming to visit and some of my family will be here Sunday-Monday. My friends and church are having a shower for me on Sunday. I can't wait to spend time with all of them one more time before we leave!

Another prayer request

We still need to be praying for MOWA and the process of writing approval letters, but today we have another prayer request. On Saturday we received our USCIS notice of being re-fingerprinted. They scheduled us to be fingerprinted on Feb 23rd. Ugh! Thats the day we leave for Ethiopia. So we are driving 3 hours tomorrow to beg them to let us be fingerprinted early. Please pray they will be gracious and allow us to be fingerprinted tomorrow. We have heard horror stories of people being turned away without any explanation or people at the fingerprinting office just being so rude. We were there last March for our first appointment and everyone was very nice to us, so we are really praying and hoping that is the case again.
Thank you!!!

Please Pray

Yesterday we received an email from our agency asking us to please pray for Ethiopian adoptions and the officials over seeing and approving the adoptions. Here is part of the email:

We are writing to ask your family to join us in prayer for the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs (MOWA) regarding the number of cases they will be able to process each day. They have made statements that they desire to decrease the number of recommendation letters they write each day. We understand that because of these statements, the Court and MOWA are in the process of meeting to discuss and work out any potential changes or new processes regarding adoptions in Ethiopia. We want to blanket these meetings with prayer and ask you to come along side us in this.

Please join us in praying for all the orphans in Ethiopia, the government officials, their meetings in the coming weeks, and all the waiting families.

Care Package #2

Care package #2 is off to Ethiopia today!!! Carmen and Garth Druckenmiller are on their way to meet their 2 boys today!!! I'm so excited for them!! Carmen will be staying in Ethiopia until they receive clearance to bring their boys home, so I am looking forward to meeting her in Ethiopia!!

This month we sent Jacob two little outfits, a taggie blanket, two books, a teething ring, and a picture of Brad and I. I made two of the taggie blankets and sent one now and kept the other other to give him when he is with us. After I sent it I read somewhere that they don't like cloth items because of germs, etc. So oh well if he doesn't get to keep it, I tried. He will have the one I kept at least! I am not sure if anyone has shown Jacob a picture of us yet, so I am excited for Carmen to show him the picture and tell him this is your mommy and daddy!!! Thank you for this gift of your time and suitcase space Carmen!!

His package is all packed up!

Precious feet

Aren't these feet so precious? Thanks Monica Munn, we received 8 new pictures this morning!!!!!!! A few pictures we have includes one of his nannies. What a joy to be able to share these pictures with Jacob when he gets older and show him all of the people that loved him before his mommy and daddy could get him home.

I can't wait to take pictures for other families when we get to Ethiopia because I know what a joy it is to receive them of Jacob!!

February Update

Today we received our February update from AWAA. This update included a few more pictures and some information about him. I have read this at least 20 times already, because its about all we know about him.
As of February 22, Jacob is 14 lbs and 24 inches long. He put on 1.5 lbs in one month!! He has been healthy all month too!!! Praise the Lord!! Many families receive word of their child getting an URTI or pneumonia or something and it seems all the kids pass it around and around. But so far Jacob has stayed healthy. A few days after we got our referral, I started thinking about getting one of these emails (because it seems like almost every family gets one at some point) and I think about how helpless we would feel that we can't comfort him when he is sick or help do anything. So we have been praying for him (and all the kids at the Transition Home) to stay healthy! It does this mama's heart good to have not worried about that!
Here is some other information we learned today:
-he eats 5oz of formula 7 times a day
-he can lift his head up while on his tummy
-he is making babbling sounds
-he is happy and content
-he gets fussy when he wants to sleep
-he is active and playful

Oh!! I can't wait to see him!! We leave 3 weeks from today!!!!! I can't wait to get there and have our "meetcha" day!!!!