"She is Yours"

Well it's been an awesome and fantastic last couple of days. I'm writing this email from the business center of a different hotel (We transferred) supposedly this hotel has public wifi, but our laptop just won't connect.

Anyway, let me tell you about our court proceedings! We woke up early on Tues morning, and the three other families who were in our adoption situation drove down to the Ethiopian high court. We waited until they called us into the judges chambers. (thankfully our judge spoke very good English). She asked us a bunch of questions about why we wanted to adopt, how we chose Ethiopia, how we plan to handle her identity issues, etc. It did not take as long as we anticipated...we were expecting to be there for a half an hour, but it only took about 5 min. At the end of the proceedings, the judge said, "Do you still want to adopt her?" We said "Yes!" And the judge replied...then, "She is yours."

Those three little words were so amazing to hear. She's ours. As far as Ethiopia is concerned Mandy and I are her parents...Unfortunately it's still going take 8-12 more weeks of waiting before they let us bring her home. She can't leave Ethiopia until the US embassy recognizes her as a US citizen. That means waiting for an Embassy Appointment, processing a birth certificate, social security number, etc. Lots more to do. I can't believe how God's hand has been in this process for us. He's been taking care of one hurdle after another.

All the waiting, all the frustration has been worth it (100%), and I would gladly go through it all again. I can't wait for you to meet her. Kiera's incredible. Let me tell you about our last day together:

After the court hearing we grabbed lunch and went to see Kiera one last time. After seeing her 2 days in a row she was so excited to see us. She seemed to remember us and she was so playful and attentive. We fed her, and wrapped her up in the prayer shawl we got from Trinity, prayed over her, and then we took as many pictures as we could. You won't believe it. She was so close to rolling over! She almost did it, and we had the camera rolling. It's sad that she didn't though. It would have been so cool to be there for that milestone in her young life. She'll probably be rolling, crawling and moving all over the place by the time we see her again. Oh well...then they came to say good-bye. They allowed us to place her in her bed in the nursery. She was fine when we laid her down and gave her kisses. But she began to cry as we walked away (we were good up to that point...then it got hard). So we said the goodbyes we didn't want to say.

One last thing - we found out from our agency that Ethiopia does not allow us to post pictures of Kiera on the web while she is still living in the care center/orphanage. That means we've been breaking the rules (in ignorance) up to this point by posting pictures on the blog and facebook. We'll be taking those pictures down after we get back to the US, and we won't be posting any new picture for public viewing on the web until we are permitted to do so. But we are allowed to send all the picture we want through email. Feel free to pass the pictures around if you like as you receive them. More will be coming soon.

Keep us in your prayers as we travel to Lalibella tomorrow. It's a massive church structure on the other side of the country and it's one of the 8th wonders of the world. Also, when we get home - remind me to tell you about the leper colony we visited...it's another one of those experiences that's tough to put into words.

Thanks for all your prayers and love.

Joel (and Mandy)