May 26, 2004

(Here was the first big dip in the roller coaster we call adoption!!)

Last night as we discussed kids we had seen that day, there was a little sibling group that really stood out. I saw Beti and recognized her from her skin condition - vitaligo. I took her picture and Thomas' picture. As soon as I was done taking pictures, she came and crawled in my lap and stayed there for quite a while. She held my hand and stayed in my lap and was just generally possessive of me, right off the bat. (RAD warning sign!!) She was part of the crowd there when they were all talking about where they were going – someone pointed to her and said Germany and she shook her finger and said, no, no. I knew that she had already been “chosen”, then rejected. How can that not affect you?

So, last night as we talked and looked through the pictures of the day, we decided that if it was OK,, we would take the sibs, Buzaneh (a better spelling of his name) and the baby. If they weren't OK with us adopting the two kids, then we would take another 12-year old from H's and one baby from Kidane Mehret. Ashenafe said he couldn't decide last night, so I told him to pray all night and tell us in the morning. We went to bed and I woke up at 4 (again) and typed yesterday's happenings. I did finally go back to bed around 6 or so. When we got up, I asked what Ashenafe thought and he said the two kids. :) All of us were OK with that. We tried to check email before we went but the Internet place was still closed. We went to MOLSA for the ever-elusive letter. We waited around for the better part of an hour, only to find out that the letter had still not been signed by Ato Haddush's boss and he was out of town until this afternoon. So, we came back home to do email.

We then went to Kidane Mehret and played with the kids for quite a while – maybe 2 hours – while we waited for Sister Lutgarda to get back, then waited for her to find out if they were still available. She came back after a long time and had CALLED GERMANY to ask the woman who had wanted them, then backed off, if she was sure she did NOT want to adopt them and could they be placed with another family. The woman told her that she was not 100% sure she wanted them and to not let them miss their chance at having a family, that there were lots of other children she could choose from. They had their blood tests very recently, for the woman in Germany, and are negative, but we took them out with us anyway. We got Buzaneh's blood tests done – they're negative. We also got photos of all three, had some lunch and headed back to Kidane Mehret, where we dropped the kids off and started the official paperwork. She told us we should have taken the baby to get the blood test at the same time and I told her we would go then to get her. So, we did leave to get her. As we were leaving, Ashenafe said “Oh, yeah, I was right. Jesus loves me better” (for answering his prayer as to the siblings). He was funny!