Welcome

We would like to welcome you to the journey to our sons. Sons! Man, never thought that word would ever come to fruition in MY vocabulary. Through this blog I hope to be able to keep you all abreast of the happenings in the completion of this adoption of our sons, Abel and Tekleab - soon to be Paul Martin and Samuel Michael (with their approval).





Soooo, have you "met" the boys yet? We were much quieter about this adoption than Julia's last year for various reasons. Mainly, the wait is not easy and not without complications and after hitting so many roadblocks and snags and such with her journey it begins to rate about as popular as asking a 10-1/2 month pregnant woman . . . "You haven't had that baby YET?" And yes, we know that without caring there would be no questions as to progress or lack thereof.




I hope to get you all up to speed on the process thus far, the boys themselves, and our upcoming trip to meet them and bring them home.

These are referral photos of the boys - aren't they handsome?

Some quick facts . . . they are brothers. Abel (and it is pronounced A-BELL, not like Able as most everyone I know says from the Cain/Abel story) is older. He is described as very sweet and caring. For months I did not see a full smile - but I have since we received his referral. He is caring and attentive. He (I'm almost embarrassed to post this) is fascinated by . . . upper arm fat! Can you imagine? :o)

Tekleab (Tek-LOB) is more shy but comes out of his shell easily. I've been told that I'll have my hands full. GOOD!

The boys live in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia which is the city I believe where they were born. They both have January birthdays and their ages are 5 and 3. Records are not exact for the country and their chronologic ages may be different, but for now we are simply going with what we have been told.

We will ask them (through an interpreter) if they will accept their "new" names. We had toyed with the idea and will consider keeping all or part of their Ethiopian names. Unlike Julia, their names were given by their birth-family and are a part of their heritage. We in turn, would like to share their new family names (of course Martin is Marty's first name and Michael is his older brother's middle name). Both of us have had Paul as uncles (can you see the Bible theme?) and Samuel was just a name we were drawn to. Currently the boys' names mean "breath of God" and "planted from God" and I cherish the fact of the significance of the meanings.

I hope to address many of the common questions that arise with adoption and not sound trite. One of the most pressing and common is "Ethiopia????" I smile just thinking of this. Yes, my sons are dark. Mary has already corrected someone as to her brothers being black . . . she simply lovingly stroked their photos and said "they are BROWN." The admiration and joy in noticing that difference made me take note of my defensiveness in the original comment.

Many (if not all) of you know that Marty went to Ethiopia last spring as part of a mission group. We had been working on Julia's adoption for quite some time at that point, and had just switched to China's special needs program and been approved to adopt Miss Julia. Marty had her referral photo on the trip.

The trip was amazing and a total life-changing event for Marty - not only simply the fact that this homebody of a man chose to leave to travel with a group of women he had not met (except one woman in WalMart once), but he came home with a fire in his heart for Ethiopian sons. He didn't want a singular son and didn't want a baby. There was a quiet strength in his desire and I must admit I was overwhelmed that even while in China he was referring to our sons still waiting. Basically it comes down to the fact that there is an OVERWHELMING need for families for these children. If you have witnessed first hand, are led to act, and in turn do nothing I believe it is sin. Adoption is not for everyone - but it is for us and it is how we choose to grow our family.

After we got settled in with Julia and Mary and they began adjusting to the idea of being family we began our journey to the boys. It has been amazingly swift in comparison with China. We didn't start until after the beginning of the year with our first application. Our choice in adoption agency is Hope Adoption Agency in Missouri - a small, no-frills operation that is run simply for the purpose to bring families to the children waiting as opposed to bringing children to waiting families. Although it is not a requirement to be a Christian, the group is one of the most amazing, loving, and Christ-like examples I have seen. We pray together, we celebrate homecomings and console the disappointments.

When I was suddenly asked if we would consider accepting the referral of these handsome boys in February I just melted. I cried. I called Marty. We accepted immediately and then had to backtrack to get our home study agency to support us because since it happened much faster than we anticipated, Paul is actually older than Mary and this is considered a no-no by many in the adoption community. It was after we accepted (acceptance took us maybe 5-10 minutes) that the coordinator asked . . . "Did you want to SEE them?" Haha - we didn't even consider that! We simply had prayed for God to lead us to the agency we should be at that we didn't consider it a question of IF we would accept a referral - much less see them first.

So that is the story of how we started!