It Takes a Whole Village...

For the past 6 weeks I've wanted to brag on our community a little bit because of how awesome they are! Seriously, our friends have walked us through the thick and think, pains and celebrations, every single seemingly meaningless detail - they have cared about. It moves me to tears to even think about how they have expressed such real love for us and our babies over the past 18 months.

When it came time to "announce" our referral, our small group was among the first round of people we were dying to tell. We found out about our referral on a Monday morning and planned on telling our small group on Tuesday night at small group. It was an agonizing 36 hour wait, but totally worth their reactions...

We made the announcement by presenting these t-shirts [below] to them. Brian calmly pulled each t-shirt out of a bag and excitedly announced that WE GOT OUR REFERRAL and they were finally going to be ah-gots [uncles] and ah-kasts [aunties]! Shock and awe and screaming and laughter and tears erupted! This is a picture of our amazing small group: Tony and Erin [left] and Loc and Christina [right].

After the intitial shock wore off, they wanted to know every single detail. This beautiful picture of me with my eyes closed is describing the past 36 hours and our kiddos. Erin got her kids out of bed to hear the news! You can see Christina here totally being Christina - thoughtful, introspective, totally crying, and overwhelmed at God's faithfulness.
The next morning I got to tell our staff at Newsong. I had already told my staff [minus Abe who was on vacation...SAD!], so when I made the announcement to our entire staff these guys ripped off their 2nd layer shirts to proudly display their new Ethiopian ah-got and ah-kast shirts.
This last pic is just another classic example of how supportive my girlfriends are. Christina and Erin held my hand through Babies R Us, carefully helping me select the 2 items I need from a walls of 100s of items. In a little over an hour, I registered for most everything we need for them. True love! NOTICE: I'm wearing my very own "eh-my-ay"/mama t-shirt that Erin got for my last birthday!!I have to say, we have the best village ever to bring our babies home. Though it breaks our heart not to have biological family in the area, our understanding of family is so much deeper and wider than blood...in more ways than one! :)