Meeting Wycliffe workers

Today we met with people from Wycliffe here in Addis.  We had a wonderful time meeting everyone.  They are a great group of people, doing wonderful things.  We ate at the Garden Paradise Restaurant for lunch. The boys both had a burger, I had a fish kabob(it was great) and Bill had spicy Beg tibs( shredded lamb)    The people here are real nice.  The coffee we had was great.  It was ilk and coffee, of course Bill had the double strength.  We are back at the guest house for now.  Every one is taking a break.  We will go out later for dinner then to bed.  I am thinking we will leave early tomorrow because the people from Wycliffe say it is a far drive.  We are traveling with another family.  Till next time...

We made it!

We finally made it to Addis! We had a wonderful night in Dubai! The
boys loved the night time tour of the city. They saw all the buildings
they have seen on the travel channel! We arrived in Addis in the late
morning. The people are nice here and the staff have been nice also.
We got ourselves settled then were off with another AWAA family to the
mountains. The boys loved seeing a 1600 year old church out of a cave
and the view of the city was wonderful. If I could only bottle the
breeze it would be great. I did not want to leave the mountain. Getting
ready to leave we were found by a group of young children. We passed out
some snack bars and one little girl was thrilled when Bill gave her his
Wycliffe pen. It has been awesome so far! Saturday we head down to Sodo
to meet our daughter's birth family. Tomorrow we are meeting a couple
here who are missionaries with Wycliffe. Can wait to share more, Till
next time....

We are off

We are finally off! Here is a picture of us as we wait. After much hard work and packing we are leaving! Next time we post we will be in Etiopia! Here we go!!!!!!

Praying it all gets done

We just found out today that we will be able to meet our daughter's birth relatives. I had all but given up hope that this would happen. I just prayed that if it was something that the God had planned for us it would have to work out. To say I was surprised when I opened my e-mail to find out it finally was going to happen would be an understatement. We are all very busy trying to get things done so we can travel in peace. Bill has been working on the addition every free minute he has. I have been painting and trying to organize all the stuff for packing. Tomorrow is a totally insane day for us.... we have our school co-op, a noon conference call, a 2 o'clock conference call for Wycliffe then Bill is off to teach at a Bible school for the evening. Busy to say the least. I know that God has it all in His hands...now I just need to leave it all there. Only 5 days until we are gone... praying it all gets done!

the countdown

Nick keeps telling me the count down of days till we leave for Ethiopia. He is so excited. We all are excited. We are trying to finish the upstairs and have been working almost day and night. It would be so great if we could have the two guys upstairs and her room ready to go. This has been a wild ride. Bill has been starting to work on it at 6:00 AM every morning works till 9 then works on Wycliffe stuff then works on the house during lunch, then after work..work through dinner until around 11 every night. He is a hard worker. Today the boys are back to school. Hard to really get back into it. It has been nice not to have to worry. Well seven days and counting. I feel like a crazy person with list of things to do then list of list of things to get done. Oh well, I guess one thing at a time and I will get done. Off to school, work, gathering and packing.......

Well, Christmas is over and we are a few days closer to our travel dates. We leave on the 12th of Januarary. I just recieved some wonderful pictures of our little girl. She is such a cutie! I can not wait to see her face to face. My two sons are getting excited to travel. This will their first time traveling this far. There is so much to do before we go. Better get moving on the to do list.

We just received the best phone call from Nicole. We passed court. Emenet Elizabeth Ann Richardson is ours. I still can not believe it. I have been thinking about all the delays and situations that made up our journey to this point. I can say one thing God is faithful! We have just one more thing to over come. Our travel expenses. This seems to be the area that is a major struggle. I just keep telling myself my God is bigger than any thing. He is my provider! We will pictures of our little girl soon.