Headed to Ethiopia in 12 days!

What a crazy journey adoption is. In two weeks, on January 20, we will board a plane for 18 hours of travel to the other side of the world. We will be 8 time zones from Raleigh, NC. I have posted a clock on the right hand sidebar of this blog, down at the bottom, that shows what time it is in Ethiopia right now; check it out.

The trip will be hard, tiring, uncomfortable and unfamiliar. But we can't wait to go. We will get to see Ethiopia, meet our G-boy, and go to court where he will become ours and we will become his. G-boy will legally be our son; we will legally be his parents! Wow! Here is G-boy holding our picture. Once we are legally each others, we can post a full picture of G-boy.

If all goes well at court, we will return 8-12 weeks later to bring G-boy home.

So Thursday morning, Jan 20th, we leave from Raleigh at 6:10am. After 18 hours of travel, we will arrive in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. It will be 8am Friday when we get off the plane. That day we will rest and perhaps shop for trinkets to remind us and G-boy of his home country.

On Saturday, we will wake up bright and early and drive west 10 hours to Nekemte, which is the last "big city" on our journey to G-boy. Our adoption agency, YWAM has an orphanage in Nekemte. We will stay the night in Nekemte. Here are some pictures of Nekemte taken from our adoption agency's blog.

The next day, Sunday, we will drive 2 more hours to Gimbie. The road between Nekemte and Gimbie is bone jarringly bumpy and Rob will most definitely need his Dramamine. However, the drive is beautiful and we will see wildlife and "National Geographic" scenery. Here are some scenes on the road to Gimbie, again taken from YWAM's blog.

YWAM has an orphanage in Gimbie too and here is where we will meet G-boy. Please pray for our first meeting. Do we hug him? Will he want to hug us? Will he understand why I am crying so hard? Will he want to call us Mom and Dad? We will bring a ball and some books to hopefully help us warm up to each other. But prayers for supernatural heart clicking would be appreciated. Here is a pic of the Gimbie Widows & Orphans Home:

We will spend Sunday in Gimbie getting to know G-boy, visiting with his nannies, visiting the market, visiting the 7th Day Adventist Hospital, and seeing YWAM's street kid's ministry.

YWAM has a ministry to the street children in Gimbie, called Abdi Borii, which provides the street children with tuition for school, school supplies, hot lunches, clothes, shoes, a place to sleep and medical care through the Adventist Hospital. These are young children found living without any adult supervision on the dangerous streets of this town. The kids must promise not to beg or gamble to stay in the program.

Sunday evening we will drive back to Nekemte to spend the night and then on Monday, we will drive the 10 hours back to Addis Ababa, only this time we will have G-boy with us!! Please pray that G-boy is at peace, that he understands all that is happening, that he does not get car sick.

When we arrive in Addis Ababa we will take G-boy to a new orphanage (his new home until we return to pick him up). We anticipate this to be the hardest part of the whole journey. How will we leave our newfound son in this place that he has never seen? Pray for supernatural peace, for an understanding that we will come back. As hard as this will be, we will do what has to be done that he can become each others forever.

On Tuesday, we will visit with G-boy in his new orphanage, rest, and possibly look around Addis a little.

On Wednesday, we will go to court. This is where G-boy will become officially our son and we will become officially his parents. Pray that there will be no hiccups and we pass this day. There have been many cases that do not pass the first time thru and this only delays bringing the child home, so pray that we pass this Wed.

That Wed night at 10:15pm we leave to return to Raleigh. I can't imagine how we will feel, probably excited to be done with this leg of the adoption journey, relieved to be headed home and excited to see our 4 kiddos, and heavy with the pain of leaving our newest son.

After 24 hours of travel, we will arrive in Raleigh at 2:00 pm on Thursday, Jan 27th. We would appreciate your prayers for us, for G-boy, for the 4 kiddos here (and their caregivers!!). We have appreciated each one of you who have come alongside us in this journey.