Leaving tomorrow!

We leave tomorrow morning for Ethiopia!

Here's a Christmas song that I heard for the first time while driving home from Detroit on Monday.  It's a fun medly of Christmas songs...but at the 2:18 minute point the song struck a real chord with me.  Listen to it...really, please listen to it!

Merry Christmas!

5 Days!

Only 5 more days until we board a plane to Ethiopia!  That means we'll be meeting H & M in 7 days!  That's next week!  It still doesn't really feel "real" yet.  I wonder when it will--probably when we go through the orphanage gates and are just about to see H & M for the very first time.

Last week we were on our last family vacation as a family of 5 (we were also joined by my parents & brother as well as Aaron's parents, sister & brother-in-law).  We went to chilly Orlando, Florida.  We had a wonderful time despite the record low temperatures.  We layered on our clothes, put our hoods up, bought gloves at a local gift shop and spent the entire week at Universal Studios. 

The kids had a blast (as did Aaron & I).  They were just at the right age to really enjoy the parks (Universal Studios & Universal Islands of Adventure).  There were quite a few highlights for me.  Isaiah volunteered to go down onstage during an "animal actors" show and had a dove land on his head and then he gave some commands to the yellow lab from the movie Marley & Me.  The new Harry Potter attractions were amazing!  Oh, and Butterbeer--so good!  We spent quite a bit of our money on Butterbeer. 

We also went out to dinner at a really good Ethiopian restaurant.   The food and the service was wonderful.  I'm so glad we had a chance to do that with all of our extended family before we left for Ethiopia.

Aaron's parents gave us (including the kids) and his sister & brother-in-law, tickets to Cirque du Soleil for an early Christmas present.  It was quite a show.  If you ever get a chance to see it I would recommend it.

Despite the cold weather, the kids had fun swimming in the heated pool. 

We had a couple of our flights cancelled on the way home and ended up driving the last stretch from Detroit.  I'm excited to print the following picture and share it with H and M next week.  I wonder what they'll think of it.

So, now it's time to get everything organized/packed for our next journey.  God is so good.

Have a Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year!

New Chairs

Yesterday we bought 2 new chairs for our dining room table.  We're one step closer to being ready for H & M to come home.

Orphan Sunday

Last Sunday was Orphan Sunday at our church.  Aaron shared a little of our adoption story as well as a heartfelt message.  The audio for the sermon along with the videos used in the service are below.

Powered by Podbean.com

Video #1

Hope is Fading – Orphan Sunday from Allan Rosenow on Vimeo.


Video #2



Reflection Song (played during the offering time)

Plans are made!

We have our travel plans figured out.  Yay!  I love having a plan.  We (me & Aaron, our 3 kids & Aaron's mom) fly out at 10am on December 20th, arriving  Addis Ababa, Ethiopia at 9:50pm on December 21st.  We'll be staying at a nice guest house (Ethio Comfort Guest House) along with many of the other families traveling for court from our agency.  We are going to be collecting donations and small gifts for the children at our church for the next few weeks.  Our kids are excited about playing "Santa" to the children in the orphanage while we are there over Christmas (we'll be there over Christmas time here in the US, but Christmas--or Ganna--is celebrated on Jan. 7th in Ethiopia).  We will be able to visit H & M for 2 hours each morning and then we'll take in the city during the rest of the day.  Our court date is on Thursday, December 23.  I'm hopeful that everything will go smoothly.  We will leave Ethiopia at 11:25pm on Wednesday, December 29 and return home to Wisconsin at 5:45pm on Thursday, December 30.

Your prayers for our court date, safe travel, our health and for H & M would be wonderful.  My prayer, and maybe yours too, is that H & M would be ready for this change that is about to happen in their lives, that all of us at home would be prepared for this change, and that H & M's past hurts would be healed more each day.

We will meet H & M in exactly 6 weeks from today!

AHHHHHHH!

We got our court date!  December 23rd!  We'll be in Ethiopia for Christmas with our new kids! 

We're hoping to be able to take our 3 kids along with us...we'll see if all the details work out for us.

Aaron needs to make new plans for our church's Christmas Eve service.  I know it's going to be difficult for him to not be there for one of the largest servcies of the year, but I also know he's excited to go to Ethiopia.

Ahhhh!  Where to start, where to start?!

A Little Push

Sometimes we need God to open our eyes and give us a little push.  Read the following blog entry by a woman living in Haiti right now.

http://allthingshendrick.blogspot.com/2010/10/reality-is-weighty-thing.html

Interesting article

Here's a link to an interesting article on Ethiopian Adoption that was put out by msnbc.com yesterday:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39636986/ns/health-kids_and_parenting/

 

We're still waiting to hear about our court date.  I think this is the hardest waiting we've had to do yet!

So, what are you going to do about it?

Here are a few statistics about Ethiopia that I have gathered over the past year...

• Ethiopia is about the size of Texas
• 1 in 10 children die before their first birthday
• 60% of children in Ethiopia are stunted because of malnutrition
• There are 4.6 million total orphans in Ethiopia, of which 720,000 have been orphaned by AIDS alone
• Half of the children in Ethiopia will never attend school
• Ethiopia's doctor to child ratio is 1:24,000
• Ethiopia is considered the 5th most impoverished nation in the world, with the average income $108/year

I came across the following quote and it really struck a chord with me...

Rich Stearns, President of World Vision, US said,

"I believe that this could very well be looked back on as the sin of our generation. I look at my parents and ask, where were they during the civil rights movement? I look at my grandparents and ask, what were they doing when the holocaust in Europe was occurring with regard to the Jews, and why didn't they speak up? And when we think of our great, great, great-grandparents, we think how could they have sat by and allowed slavery to exist? And I believe that our children and their children, 40 or 50 years from now, are going to ask me, what did you do while 40 million children became orphans in Africa?"

It's Not About Us

A few weeks ago Aaron and I were asked to write out our "adoption story."  Aaron did a fabulous job writing out his perspective on our story and I wanted to give you a chance to read it.  It's kind of long, but totally worth the time to read it.

It’s Not About Us

By Aaron Winowiski

Why would a family with three kids want to adopt two more?  The short answer is: It's not about us.

When Michelle first started sharing her thoughts about international adoption, we were teenagers dreaming of what the future could look like.  But then the future comes, and dreams fade away, right?  That's what I thought.  Shortly after our daughter was born (child number three) I thought we were done adding children into our family.  Three is a good number.  But as I settled into the idea of raising three children, Michelle brought up adoption again.  What?  Isn't three enough?

Then we shifted gears and went into a new adventure, giving birth to a different kind of baby--a new church.  I quit my corporate job, taking a cut in pay to become a church planting intern.  Learning the ropes and launching a new church took years of focus and energy.  Almost two years after starting New Day Christian Church in Weston, Wisconsin--just as the dust was settling--Michelle brought up adoption again, and I put my foot down.

No way.  Adoption was a path that we were not qualified to take.  Our choices in life had removed that dream from our options.  We chose to start having kids immediately after graduating from college, and we chose for Michelle to stay out of the workforce to be home with those kids, and we chose to follow the path of church planting, and we chose to buy a house in the upper end of what we could afford (which was already limited by our previous choices).  Faithful people had already committed thousands of dollars to help get New Day off the ground.  I was not going to go back to those people to ask them for more money.  We couldn't afford to adopt.

And anyway, what was wrong with the kids we had?  What was wrong with the life we had?  Why was Michelle not happy?  I just didn't get it.

Michelle took my objections and dealt with them in a constructive way.  She started an in-home day-care business to raise money for the adoption, putting everything into savings except taxes and 10% for offering at church.  She worked with me to refinance the house in a way that helped me feel better about our mortgage.  She assured me there was nothing wrong with our life.  Somehow she understood (even when I didn't) that this was not about us.

Over the course of a year and a half, she kept saving money, and she kept asking if I was praying about the adoption process.  That kind of annoyed me.  I felt like she was saying, "I know this is what God wants us to do; you would too if you ever talked to Him."

I wasn't committed to the adoption process at first, but I am committed to Michelle.  One of my goals in life is to always be her biggest hero.  She supported me throughout the craziness of starting a new church.  Adoption seemed crazy to me, but supporting Michelle is what I do.

So, I listened (sometimes obviously half-heartedly) to her stories about adoption blogs she was reading and information she was learning.  Man, I was negative about adoption.  The places and the situations Michelle talked about just weren't resonating with me, and I told her that.  She listened, and looked into some other countries where kids need families.

Now, I don't know why this is, but I have had a heart for Africa for years.  I have often been frustrated about how insurmountable some of the challenges seem in Africa.  When Michelle started talking about African adoption, my negative attitude softened.  We can't change the continent, but what if we could reach one or two children, and change their whole world?  I began to get involved.

About a year after putting my foot down, I found myself walking along-side (even if just a half-step behind) Michelle in this process.  In a few years we would have enough money to enter into all of the bureaucracy that's required to rescue a child from a dire future.  By American standards we weren't rich, but by international and historical standards we lived in a luxurious castle (Hot and cold running water? Amazing!) that could support one or two additional family members.  We had the means, and there were children with a need.  Maybe this wasn't about us.  It was about them.

In March, 2010, Michelle started praying that God would double the money she had saved, and accelerate our adoption process.  A month later the government changed their tax law for adoptive parents, and suddenly we went from not qualifying to being qualified for a significant tax refund.  The refund would double the money Michelle had saved.  We were both excited about this, but to qualify we would have to start the process.  We only had half the money we needed.  We'd have to trust that the other half would show up in loans or grants until we could benefit from the tax refund (probably in 2012).

By that time we had decided to adopt two older children from Ethiopia.  After finding out about the government money, Michelle looked at me and said, "Are we going to do this?  Is this the time?" 

I said, "I think so.  Let's do this."

"Really?  Because if you say we're doing this, I'm going to take that to mean that we're going to start the paperwork."

"Uh-huh.  Let's start the paperwork.  We're doing this."

It wasn't long before we were diving into the dozens of notarized forms and applications and recommendation letters.  More importantly, we had identified the children we wanted to adopt--two of them, a boy and a girl, cousins listed as eight years old.  (I say "listed as" because ages in international orphanages are often estimates, and they tend to skew young.  They are probably older than that.)  We were really doing this.  It was about them.

Our three biological kids have been part of the conversation for a couple of years now, so they are not shocked to see pictures of their brother and sister-to-be (God willing) hanging in the house now.  Their rooms are filling up with the furniture necessary to house their new siblings.  And they are okay with it.  In fact, they seem pretty excited.

Now it's September.  All of our paperwork (on this side of the ocean) is done.  We have applications for grants and low/no-interest loans out to half a dozen organizations.  We're waiting and praying, and often answering the question, "When will you go to Ethiopia to get them?"  We don't know.  We do know that those two children are becoming a bigger part of our family every day, and they don't even know we exist.  They have been living in an orphanage (a very nice one from what I hear) for over a year.  They are safe now, but they must know that older children are much less likely to be adopted.  Have they thought about what it could mean to be a teenager without a family support system in Ethiopia?  Have they dreamed about a fresh start?

It won't be easy for any of us, especially those adopted kids.  What will it be like to travel from Ethiopia to Wisconsin in winter?  They might as well be travelling to a different planet!  These aren't babies who will have no memory of the country they left; they are old enough to retain their language, their customs, their memories of home.  Will our family ever feel like home to them?  I hope so.  I hope we--not just our family, but our extended family, our church, our neighborhood, our school district, and our community--I hope we can help them retain their heritage and identities, while at the same time weaving them into the fabric of our lives.

It won't be easy for any of us.  But it will be rewarding.  Anyway, it's not about us.  It's about them.

I-171H

Our I-171H came today!  U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services "determined that [we] are able to furnish proper care to orphans."  We've done everything we need to do here in the US.  Now we're just waiting to have our Ethiopian court date assigned...hopefully we'll find that out in October.

We're off to celebrate 4 years of New Day Christian Church tonight with party/dinner and...hummm, I guess I don't really know exactly what the "and" is yet.  I've heard there will be music and some silly skits along with some volunteer recognition.  I'm sure it will be a fun night!

fingerprints are done!

Last Thursday Aaron and I had our biometrics done (that just means our fingerprints) in Milwaukee.  Hopefully everything worked with that--I've heard some people had to have them redone up to 3 times.  After our fingerprinting appointment we went out for lunch at the only Ethiopian restaurant we could find in Milwaukee.  It was pretty good, but I don't have much to compare it to since I've only eaten at an Ethiopian restaurant one other time!  We talked with the owner and found out that he came to the US to go to college in Stevens Point which is just 25 minutes from our house.  He gave us his business card so that we could keep in touch with him.  He said he would let us know when there were Ethiopian events going on in the Milwaukee area.  I like making connections like that.

Our agency let us know that the Ethiopian courts will be opening on September 28.  So, hopefully by mid October we'll have a court date.  I'm not sure if that's realistic, though--maybe we'll have to wait even longer to hear about our court date.

ok, ok, ok!

Well, I've had a number of people ask me when I was going to start a blog...so, here it is!  I don't know how well I'll keep up with this, but I'll try to keep you posted about the major events in our lives.  Speaking of major events, the main reason I'm starting this blog is to document our Ethiopian adoption journey.

This Thursday (that's tomorrow already!) Aaron and I will be getting our fingerprints done.  That is required by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service.  We are waiting for our court date to be assigned.  I'm really not sure when that could happen.  We'll have to travel to Ethiopia twice--once for our court date and then again to pick up our children and bring them home.  Those 2 trips will be a few weeks apart.  We are adopting 2 beautiful 8+ year old children--a boy and a girl cousins.  Their pictures are up on our wall and we talk about them everyday, but it's so strange to realize that they know nothing about us yet.

Today was the first day of school for our 3 kids.  S. is now in 2nd grade, I. is in 4th grade and P. is in 5th grade.  This is P.'s last year in the elementary school.  Time really does fly by.

S., I., & P. waiting for the bus

So, there you have it!  My first blog entry.