Nervous?

So...I tried to sleep. Everyone has taken melatonin and is out. As I am sitting here, thinking how fairly calm it has been today, I remembered someone asking me this last week..."Are you nervous?" "No", was my answer. Far from it! Almost 12 months ago we were making this same trip. We were doubling our parent to child ratio in a matter of days. I WAS nervous then. :)

Sami and Tsion's 3 cousins asked Peter last week at club if they could come to the airport with S and T's Dad. We said great, and are keeping it a surprise. It will be much different that the tearful goodbye almost a year ago. Sami and Tsion are going home (as Tsion says "to my house") and in a way, I feel like we are as well.

Ciao!

Our wakeup call is set for 3:30 A.M. We will be the family of 6, with 24 total bags in the international line at 4:30. We left home after a small detour to urgent care, Josh happened to wake up with pink eye, something he has never had! We will be doing some updates here, but team updates will be on our send us to addis site. Merry Christmas everyone!

YL Addis Club

Today we had an amazing club time a lot of kids coming week after week. Today Yhanes/John one of my volunteer leaders gave his life testimony for about 15 to 20 minutes. It was so great and every kid was to quite hearing his testimony. Yohanes grew up among those kids and every kid knows what Yohanes was before he gave his life to Jesus. Hewas smoker, chewing chate, drunker and trouble maker and every kid knew he did all these things. Today, he was telling them he is free from the bandage of the evil works and he is a different person now in Christ Jesus. Amen! of course they have seen a big change in his life. He is a key volunteer leader and I do nothing with out him. Please keep Yohanes in your prayers as he grows in his spiritual life. I am sending you some picture attachment bel ow fromtoday’s club. Your prayers bringing a big change here.

June 2007 YL Camp

I am reposting this cuz I love it! One month from now we will have our own camp video to post. :)

7 More Days......

What have I been up too? Packing, repacking, buying supplies, and camp decorations. The funnest part has been weighing suitcases. I get on the scale (fun!) then I grab the suitcase, Zach tells me my weight WITH the 50 pound suitcase.....over and over and over. Any volunteers?

We had our last team meeting, and Lance and I cannot believe it has been 7 months since the idea hatched. We will be flying out next week, and for the first 5 days, we will get ready for the team, visit the camp site, and hang out with Sami and Tsion's family. The team will fly in on Christmas day. For 3 days the team will divide in half. Half of our team will go to Project Mercy, and the other half will help with the Young Life camp. We will then visit Youth Corp in Addis, CYM, and have a day of sightseeing.

Peter has also told us of an orphanage in the countryside with 120 kids, with no kitchen or stove. So that is another place that we will visit, bring a stove, and other supplies. We are looking forward to helping wherever we can!

Too Good Not To Post

The following is a forward that I received...Some things that I post here are things I want to look back and laugh about, so here goes!

Q: How many women does it take to change a light bulb?

Woman's Answer: One! ONLY ONE!!!! And do you know WHY? Because no one else in this house knows HOW to change a light bulb! They don't even know that the bulb is BURNED OUT!! They would sit in the dark for THREE DAYS before they figured it out.And, once they figured it out, they wouldn't be able to find the light bulbs despite the fact that they've been in the SAME CABINET for the past 17 YEARS! But if they did, by some miracle of God, actually find them, 2 DAYS LATER, the chair they dragged to stand on to change the STUPID light bulb would STILL BE IN THE SAME SPOT!!!!! AND UNDERNEATH IT WOULD BE THE WRAPPER THE LIGHT BULBS CAME IN!!! BECAUSE NO ONE EVER PICKS UP OR CARRIES OUT THE GARBAGE!!!! IT'S A WONDER WE HAVEN'T ALL SUFFOCATED FROM THE PILES OF GARBAGE THAT ARE A FOOT DEEP THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE HOUSE!! IT WOULD TAKE AN ARMY TO CLEAN THIS PLACE! AND DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON WHO CHANGES THE TOLET PAPER.

I'm sorry. What was the question?

Young Life Addis Update

"First of all I would like to say thank you very much for your continues prayers for me. The club having an amazing movement currently, a lot of kids coming and enjoying being together signing, jumping and hearing the word of God with excitement. Today Dec, 8, 2007 was 7th time since we open for this 2000 year E.C. It was crazy Medish YL club day and every kid was dress unusual like crazy way and it was so funny. I talked from Mark 5:1-20 about the man /crazy who had been demon possessed became a living example of Jesus’ power. The club room is not enough and the big thing is the owner of the house allows us to expand it. That will be a big deal for us. I am just sending you the attachment of this crazy day pictures and see it below.

~Peter

Sami Shined Shoes

Before Santa pictures the other day I told Sami to clean off his white tennis shoes. I commented on it, because he was doing such an impressive job. He said he shined shoes in Addis. Now, I am sure that a lot of adoptive kids did jobs like this as children, but my son is a direct descendant of Haile Selassie, or thinks he is. He said his Dad would buy him "color" to shine, and if he used "color" he would be paid 1 Birr, which is about 8 cents in the U.S. I cannot imagine any of my four kids sitting on the streets shining shoes. It has taken almost a year for him to tell us that, and with all our trip preparation, I can tell that a lot of memories and thoughts are starting to surface about being there.

On the same day that Sami told me this, the following incident occurred, which is why I believe the above about his background. :) We were at the ferry terminal, and since I have to tell my kids when to blow their nose (no comment, a boy thing?), I told Sami to get a "soft" (tissue) in the bathroom. He comes out, and I can tell he did not complete the task. "There is none, he said. I replied, "there is none where you sit down, in the stall?" He looked at me like I told him to eat off the floor. "Mom, that is SICK."

A Visit to Santa

We went to the big city this week to visit Santa at Nordstrom. I told Sami that Santa would be black, and at first he didn' believe me. He touched his face and said, "you mean black like me?" It was sweet. This is the first year Josh has sat on his lap without a fight. But, he did say he didn't like him because he pretended to really be Santa. Phew! At least they went along with it. My poor kids, no holiday Santa magic. :)

Your Toes Will Fall Off!!!

This video cracks me up. Josh is freezing cold, so he decided to come in. He couldn't stand the fact that Zach was still outside playing, so he tried to make him paranoid about frostbite! You can see how big the snowflakes were. They reminded me of cottonballs falling from the sky! It was amazing.

Over the River and Thru the Woods.......

To get our Christmas Tree! The last few Christmas' we have been visiting family, so we have not had a tree. Sounds bad, but it sure is easy!! Especially in January. :) Since we are leaving for Addis, we decided to put up a Charlie Brown tree from our yard, and leave it on the porch! We walked thru the woods to find the perfect one. By the time Lance had sawed thru the tree trunk, I hadn't even gotton my camera out, so no ceremony tree cutting picture!

Their fort, this reminds me of Tumnus from Narnia!

Here is Lance, spraying off our dish, so he can watch the Seahawk game!

Zach and Sami's fort

Josh's Fort

Who Signed up for THIS??

Zach's team won their game on a 30 degree day.....the Lava buns didn't help too much when it was that cold! The kids finished their Saturday playing football in the snow, something we do not see very much in Seattle. Course I was under blankets inside trying to get warm from the game!