They made it!!

We made it! The flight was long, but, relatively, it went smoothly. We met about 4 other adoptive couples that are also here to pick up their babies this week. Very exciting!

We received our visas and made it through customs without an issue...and all of our bags showed up! The adoption agency bus came to pick us up and we were surprised to see our coordinator (from the US) at the airport to get us! Ben has been helping us through the process the entire way and it was awesome to see him.

The experience here has been what we expected and not what we expected...we knew that poverty was rampant here, but it's different when you see it so deep and widespread everywhere you look. Addis Ababa is such a different place...animals and people are mixed on the streets...there are essentially no stoplights in a city of 5+ million...you can find farms in the middle of the big city. Our cab driver (whose car seemed to be on its last leg, like most cabs) didn't even have windshield wipers for our cab while it was raining! But we made it and we are seeing a different perspective on life over here. Definitely sobering...

The Guest Home is amazing. It's a small compound and there are other adoptive families here. The employees are all locals and they are extremely friendly (most all of the local people we have met have been very friendly, actually). It's very cool - they have our room set up for Sophie and Tarik! Of course, that produced some waterworks from Amy :)

We are picking up Sophie and Tarik in the morning (about 2am US Eastern time on Sunday). As the moment creeps closer, we find ourselves in awe of God and a little nervous!! We are so excited and we know that all those initial kinks and challenges will get worked out, but it's those little things that parents learn that we are nervous about! :) .

One huge blessing to us was the news Ben gave us...we had asked about a week ago if they have introduced Sophie and Tarik yet. Apparently, we are the first couple from our agency to adopt two unrelated children from Ethiopia, because they hadn't thought about introducing them before we asked! They went ahead and started getting the two acquainted and will do that going forward for other children in that situation. The blessing came when Ben told us that the counselor told Tarik that Sophie is his sister and, after a few days, he hugged and kissed her!!! From what we've heard, it takes a while for Tarik to warm up to people, so that is just awesome!

FYI - The Internet connection is extremely slow and we've already experienced the infamous Addis Ababa power outages, so we may not have such luck with emails like this over the next few days. We will try, though! Dad R - please post this today if you can. Pastor Keith and Sandra - you don't have to send these updates out via email, but please pass on the updates if you want to or if anyone asks.

Love you guys and we'll update you as soon as possible!

Amy & Phil