The beginning of the end...
Today was so ordinary and wonderful that I almost forgot that I was visiting my soon to be adopted DAUTHER in a far off country. She greeted us with smiles and hugs. I complimented her on adding a glitter top coat to her pink nail polish and she promptly ran from the room and returned to add sparkles to my nails :). We colored together, played toss, and enjoyed teaching each other our languages. She thinks that Ryan's arm hair is haliraious and loves my hair! We were even blessed with the oppurnity to eat lunch today with her...she was very insistent that we tasted all of her food from her fingers ;). She played all of our videos over and over again. She especially loves the videos of Selah everything about babies she seems to enjoy she was even giggling at the babies when they were crying and was able to settle them down!
My internal peace and joy that felt so wonderful quickly left when Truth said to us (in her language) on Monday we travel to mekelle and then chow Ethiopia...she was so very excited and grinning ear to ear. Today there was no one at the WACAP house that speeks English so th is was all on us...we quickly created calendars of march April may and June and had to rough it to explain the days of the week and dates associated with the days...we then crossed off the first through the eighth and circled the ninth to show that was today...she seemed to actually be following us, she pointed to Monday the eleventh and said "mommy daddy Hirite chow Ethiopia!"...here is where for the first time, though I am sure not the last, I had to break my daughters heart! I pointed to the eleventh and said "mommy and daddy chow Hirite and Ethiopia"...her expression grew glim and you could see small tears forming and she just looked through me for a minute...when she was ready to give me her attention again I quickly pointed to June (totally GUESS WACAP here is saying May) and said "in June mommy and daddy chow Graham, Everett, Israel, Aurora, Selah and America and say hi Ethiopia and Hirite!" She grew extremely excited and quickly asked (in our own made up way of talking) why her brothers and sisters could not come...then she pointed to March 11 and said "chow mommy and daddy" and then pointed to June and said "hello mommy and daddy...hello mekelle, chow mekelle, chow Ethiopia hello Graham, Everett, Israel, Aurora, and (kiss kiss) my baby Selah!"...so thanks be to Jesus that she seemed to truly understand that we were leaving without her and then returning to get her. We are quite sure she does not understand the length of time in between but neither do we.
Ou prayer is that Ato Teklu is able to get her paperwork doen ASAP!! And the the court finds favor in uniting us sooner then the typical time frame...and that this precious little lady would miss us terribly but with FULL KNOWLEDGE that we will return for her, as of March 11 she will legally be OUR DAUGHTER and nothing will keep this mommy and daddy from returning for her!
She sounds so sweet! And feeding another with from your hand is a sign of great love in their culture - I remember when my kids did that - it seemed so strange to me, until we were able to work out what it meant to them. So, you have been very loved! Congratulations!
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