vacation @ St. George Island

We spent a week on St George Island with our family. It was our family, my parents, my brother and his lovely wife and my Mom and Dad in law. We had a wonderful and much needed week of relaxing and funin in the sun.


Our five kids! In order of age from left to right: 10, 9,9,9. and 5 :-)
Always fun to be burried in the sand!


I had our three 9 year olds pose for a picture together.

GREAT NEWS!!

WE OFFICALLY HAVE A 4 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER, KALEAB MERCY BOND. WE WILL LEAVE IN 6 WEEKS TO BRING HER HOME. I WILL POST DETAILS AS I KNOW THEM.

sad ;(

Our court date was unsuccessful. We are waiting to hear when we may get a new one. We are hoping it is this month, otherwise the courts close until October. I bought her some shoes. I am ready to go...;(

lost teeth and Florida

Beniam lost his two bottom teeth on the same night. He really lost one, as it went down the drain. He came thru the house and asked if he could call my brother Tony. He calls him Choney. He said to him: "Choney this is me Beniam, I lost two toothez in row." He ended the conversation with: "Bye Bye baby two run shot. " Can't get baseball off his mind.

Today is the district championship of the 9 year old all stars. (Noah is on the team). As soon as it is over we take off for an extended family vacation in Florida. Woo HOO!

Next pictures will be from the beach!

A LOT TO SHARE!

OK, so last weekend we had some friends visit, that we had met in Ethiopia when we were there getting our boys. Wonderful people, he's a pastor of a Chrisitan Church and she a sahm. They visited with three of their children and their church gave us 2500 dollars. Praise God! The kids then spent the night with us and we all had a wonderful time. I felt like a kid at Christmas and didn't sleep a wink that night. I don't think anyone did. Their son, Jacob, was one of Simon Derara's best friends in the care center.

That bottom picture, you'll see is Noah, he got braces this past week.

We also received a very generous donation from a beautiful lady in Mississippi. She is sending us 3500 dollars. The rest of our adoption money (not counting trip.) I cry each time I say this!! How good God is and how he always pull thru. Doesn't he love to pull thru at the last minute? He's messing with us. :)

Uganda

I received a newsletter a few weeks ago from my adoption agency, Americans for African Adoption, with pictures of children who they are having difficulty placing with a family. The image of two of the boys has never left my mind. They are 5 and 9 and have that look in their eyes that some impoverished children have, that look of desperation and hunger. They are hungry for so much more than food. Theirs, I believe, is a deep hunger of the soul. I am praying for these children and ask that you do the same. How does it feel to have no parents? They must live in a state of fear. I pray that they know the security of a home someday. I emailed and asked about the boys and was told they are some of the rock quarry children. Here is an article:
International
Uganda's Children Work on Dangerous Rock Pile
Uganda's children: At age 4, working the dangerous rock pile for meager earnings
By KATY POWNALL Associated Press WriterKAMPALA, Uganda June 1, 2008 (AP)
The Associated Press
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Stephen Batte works in a quarry under the blazing sun, chipping rocks into gravel with a homemade hammer. It's tiring, boring and dangerous.

Stephen Bati, 10 years old, who lost his mother in the quarry in January when she was buried by a mud slide, breaks rocks in the Acholi Quarters, a slum located in Kireka, Kampala Uganda Friday, Feb. 29, 2008. (AP Photo/ Vanessa Vick)(AP)
Stephen is 9 years old, and has been on the rock pile since he was 4.
"Life has always been hard here," he whispers, carefully positioning a sharp rock before striking it with well-practiced accuracy. "But since my mother died, things have been much harder."
His mother, the woman who taught him to smash rocks when he was a toddler, was killed here in a landslide in August.
His T-shirt torn and his feet bare, Stephen is one of hundreds of people who work in the quarry on the outskirts of Uganda's capital, Kampala. Their shabby figures sit hunched over their heaps of gravel. The chink of metal against stone bounces off the rock faces.

Some things to think about:
Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required... — Luke 12:48b

History will judge us on how we respond to the AIDS emergency in Africa....whether we stood around with watering cans and watched while a whole continent burst into flames....or not. -- Bono