Christmas in Ethiopia

From Utah with Love

The someone from the post entitled "Mother, that's my mother!" is going back to Ethiopia next week. He offered to bring another care package for our son-to-be. We hope that this time EVERYTHING will make it, including my friend's personal belongings - he wasn't so lucky last time :o(

We took the waiting siblings out Christmas shopping for smallish items for their future brother, and this is what they ended up with. We plan to wrap each item up individually and put the kids' school pictures on the gifts, so "he" knows who got him what. What I'd really like, though, would be for my friend to be able to tell him WHEN his dad will show up for court! Still waiting on that same signature - the one we've been waiting on for about a month now.

So we wait....and we wait...and we wait...

because we know God is working on things we aren't able to see, and we know it will be worth it!

I can't imagine what it must be like for "him" to wait for us to come and bring him home. I read one blog very recently where the parents-to-be went to court (trip #1), spent a week with their son and then had to come home until their Embassy appointment (trip #2). The teenage boy sobbed as he held his future father, wondering why he couldn't just go home with him now. It was heart-wrenching to read. What would I think if I were that teenage boy? I'd probably wonder if it was too good to be true. I'd wonder if they were really coming back for me. I might even wonder if I was 'good enough' for them - or if they might go home and change their minds.

So I pray. And I pray. And I pray. But not for me or for my family necessarily - for "him". For our son-to-be to know that we're coming no matter what. That when we get there for trip #1, he knows that this is only the beginning and not the end. That when he waits...and waits...and waits...he will feel loved, wanted and safe knowing that the Father is preparing a place for him not only in Heaven someday, but in Utah - with a family who already loves and wants him.

I wonder what these kids are praying for?

Whatever it is...God is surely listening.

"Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me." Mark 9:37