Six days...

We are leaving to go get Mathios in six days! The last week of our life has been absolutely crazy. We found out late last week that Mathios has continued to have feeding issues and they have put him on an NG feeding tube. Of course this greatly worried us so we decided to take advantage of the resources at the International Adoption Center at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. We have been able to talk with the doctor there and she's helped us formulate a game plan for getting him home. We were encouraged this week to find out that he has started to eat some food again, but don't know what the situation will be once we get there. So we are preparing for the worst (which includes the two of us knowing how to put in and care for the NG tube!) and hoping for the best. We are so thankful for the support from the IAC and will do Mathios' follow-up care there when we get home.

We didn't receive our concrete travel dates until Tuesday and didn't realize what a miracle it was until later in the day. On Tuesday afternoon we were informed that the agency that handles all the paperwork and processing for adoptions in Ethiopia was suddenly shutting down for two weeks for training- effective immediately! Our agency's staff worked diligently after business hours ensuring that our final piece of paperwork was complete, thus enabling us to travel next week. It is truly miraculous! There was at least one other family that was supposed to be in our travel group that didn't get the necessary paperwork completed and their travel was put off until mid-August. We are praising the Lord that now is the time for us to bring our son home!

In between all the phone calls, doctor appointments, shopping, laundry, list making, packing and preparing to leave we've also been trying to make the most of our last few days as a family of three. Haven is so excited to have her brother here, but the anticipation of being apart from us has been hard for her. Please pray for her little heart!

So we leave in six days and we'll be ready. We have a few transportation details to work out and I'm sure we'll be at the store a few more times picking up "just one more thing". But come Friday, we'll have five suitcases packed and our hearts set toward Ethiopia. Can't wait!

By the way, you can sign up on the right hand side to have our blog updates delivered to your inbox. We will be posting as much as we can in Ethiopia and we'd love for you to follow along with us!

What's in a name?

Mathios Jon Kumalo Zeune.

Quite a mouthful isn't it?

Mathios: Amharic version of the name Matthew which means 'gift from God.'

Jon: Named after his grandfather and means 'God is gracious.'

Kumalo: His birth father's first name and this is his given last name by Ethiopian custom.

Zeune: Self explanatory. We didn't get to pick this one!

Mathios was named by his birth parents. Since the very start of our adoption process we have been certain that we would keep our child's given name. There were a few small caveats to this decision, but we felt very strongly about keeping his given name. The Lord knew our hearts about this and could not have given us a more aptly named child!

In Ethiopia, names take on even more significance, especially for boys, then they do here in the US. When a man has a child, the father's first name becomes the child's last name. There is no family name, but the father's first name is passed on only to the next generation. Our understanding of this cultural practice and the great emphasis placed on naming children in Ethiopia makes us appreciate our son's given name even more.

Now that we know a little bit about Mathios's birth parents and their background, knowing that they named him "gift from God" is amazing to us. He is indeed a loved little boy! He is certainly a gift to us and to our family! Our children both have two middle names, as do several of our nieces and nephews. We love this idea and of being able to honor both sides of our families and carry on those family names. There was no question that our first born son would be named after my dad, Jon and the meaning of that name is even more profound as we have been overwhelmed by God's grace in bringing Mathios into our family. We decided to keep Kumalo as his second middle name as a way of showing respect to his birth family and to his Ethiopian heritage. And well, then there's Zeune. Enough said.

And in case you were wondering, Mathios is pronounced Math-e-os. Or at least that's how we are pronouncing it! We think it is relatively correct based on our extensive internet research!

What's in a name? In this case, a lot!

He is a Z!

It's official...here's our son! Introducing Mathios Jon Kumalo Zeune! Born on May 22, 2008.

Is he adorable or what?!! Those cheeks...those lips...those eyes! His parents can't wait to bring him home!

TTD

Yesterday we received our Tentative Travel Dates (TTD) from our agency. Emphasis on the tentative! IF, and it feels like a big IF, we pass court on Tuesday, June 30, then we will travel to pick up our boy July 18-25. We have just started looking into flights and travel arrangements and hope that we will be able to get those nailed down next week IF we pass court.


Please be praying for our court date on Monday. Because of the time difference, our court appointment will actually occur in the night as we are (hopefully peacefully) sleeping. We are praying to wake up to a phone call that we passed! We can not wait to introduce you to our son!

Referral Day!

Our family of three the night of our referral!

I realize that our we received our referral over three weeks ago, so this post might seem a bit out of sync. However, I have been meaning to write about our referral phone call and just haven't sat down to do it until now. So here's how it went...

The night before our referral found Cale and I both with heavy hearts. We had trouble sleeping and had spent quite a bit of time that night talking and praying and crying (well, I did) because it just didn't seem like we were going to get our referral. Remember this post? Yeah, that's where I was at. The previous weeks I had not let my cell phone out of site because I felt like we could get the call at any moment. On that Friday, I didn't really care. I had resolved myself that it just wasn't going to happen so I went about my day like it was any other Friday.

Haven was taking a nap and I had just come in from outside where I had been working on my Beth Moore bible study "Esther". That day's lesson was so appropriate- about things that cause us great distress and the way we choose to not enjoy the rest that we have been given through Jesus. I came inside to look something up on the computer. I had just sat down on the couch when our home phone started ringing. I found that irritating because it booted me offline. So I'm sitting here waiting for whoever is calling to hang up so I can finish up on the computer when I hear through the answering machine the caller say "America World." I flew into the kitchen and picked up the phone right before the family coordinator hung up!

She said, "Kathleen? I have good news for you. This is your referral call!" To say I was stunned wouldn't begin to cover it. Thankfully I was standing next to the kitchen counter because my legs just about gave out. I replied, "Are you kidding me? Shut up! No way! Shut up!" She laughed at me and then asked how to get Cale on the phone with us. While she was conferencing Cale in I totally lost it. I just starting sobbing because I couldn't believe this was happening. When Cale came on the phone she told us all the information that she could about our sweet boy. I was furiously trying to write down everything she said because I didn't want to miss a word of it. I was thoroughly wrapped up in the moment. Always calm Cale had the wisdom to ask practical questions that I never would have thought of.

The family coordinator hung up and Cale and I were left on the line. We were shocked and all I said to him was that he better already be on his way home. We had always planned that after we got the call he would come home so we could open our email that included the baby's pictures together. He was walking out the door as we got off the phone.

Again, I just lost it! Crying so hard I could barely talk I called Amber. I hardly managed to get out, "We got the call!" She said, "WHAT????" And started sobbing with me! We were a wreck! We finally gained enough composure of ourselves so she could ask and I could answer all the pertinent questions. We were now laughing/crying because neither one of us could believe it! I called my mom and repeated this scenario. Cale was still not home and I had our referral email staring at me from our email inbox. I can not tell you the depth of self control required to not open it before Cale got here! Thankfully Haven woke up just then and distracted me for a few minutes. I greeted her from her nap with the good news! She jumped off the steps into my arms hollering, "Yay! Yay! Yay! My brother!"

Cale arrived home and we all sat on the couch to open our email. If we had been expecting our call to happen we might have been better prepared to document ourselves seeing our son's face for the first time. But we weren't! So in my mind I will always remember seeing his beautiful face for the first time and being completely overwhelmed that I was looking at my son. I, of course, sat and bawled in Cale's lap! It was an amazing moment.

Then the phone-a-rama started! Lots of calls to make and people to share our news with. I tried to call my brothers and sister-in-laws and no one answered the phone. On to a few friends and again with the voicemail. Serious buzz kill when I am jumping out of my skin with this news! Then of course everyone started calling me back at the same time. The next hour was so full of joy as we talked to family and friends and told them the good news. Haven kept wanting to tell people "the good news" and was mad when I told her I already shared it with them!

We were supposed to babysit the Wing kids that evening, but of course Amber refused to let us. So we decided to go out and celebrate with them instead. We took the kids to Chick-fil-a and walked around the "arburritos" (or the arboretum, you decide.) It was a fun night celebrating with good friends who were almost as excited as we were! We kept the celebration going by swinging by Matt and Traci's house to show them our boy's picture and recount the day's happenings. It was such a blessing to be able to share this day with people who have walked through this whole process with us!

We crawled into bed that night with M's picture on my nightstand, laughing at the difference 24 hours can make!

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."

-Isaiah 55:8-9

Good news and some not so good news

Let's start with the good news first, shall we? We got our court date set yesterday! June 30! Please join us in praying that we will pass court the first time around and be able to travel 2-3 weeks later. We haven't yet received our tentative travel dates, but that is the approximate time frame that we are working with.

And the not so good news...we received an email yesterday from the family that was taking a care package to M and found out that he has not been eating well. He has become dehydrated and has been placed on an IV (in his forehead- poor baby!). We've been in contact with our family coordinator and she is trying to get us some more information about how he's doing. So many of the children that come through the Transition Home (which is where M is right now) have trouble with eating and spend some time on an IV during their stay there. Our family coordinator said that while it is alarming to us, it is fairly standard procedure over there and that's why we haven't been notified about it yet.

We are thanking the Lord for Jason (the dad from the family who gave us this information) because he made the extra effort to find out what was going on and even had a chance to hold M and pray over him. We are SO thankful for that! (And if you have a minute go read about Jason's family and their updates from Ethiopia.) Please just pray that M would begin to eat well again and that the Lord would comfort his sweet little heart that is having to process way too much. Hopefully we will have an update soon about his condition.

Thank you for praying with us and for us!

My favorite

We found several really cute things for M this weekend, but this one has to be my favorite!


I can't wait to see him in it!