isaac with girls - home 5 days
Isaac with girls at the orphanage
Isaac with girls at the orphanageI am going to try and chronicle our trip to Ethiopia - starting at the beginning and EVENTUALLY finishing our story in different posts as i get a chance. the story is almost too good to be true and too amazing to comprehend - i can't share every bit of it as some of it needs to remain private for the girls' sake.
There is so much of this i must leave out for privacy sake but would love to tell people individually if they're interested....Our journey started in May of '07 when God moved on our hearts to adopt from Ethiopia. About a month later He led us to request twin girls. We realized we would be waiting a long time as twin girls are not a common referral CWA receives. We finished our paperwork on my birthday, Nov. 2nd and dug in for a LONG wait. Towards the end of January I was getting antsy. It had only been 3 months but i was getting impatient. It was a Sunday that i told Isaac we better pray and make sure about the whole "twin" thing. I was sure we would get a referral faster if we asked for only 1 baby. We made a choice to let go and continue with what we believed. It was that Thursday we received the call about our twin girls. They were only 2 and half weeks old and we instantly knew they were ours. They were tiny, fragile, and had been through so much in their short lives but we knew they were our miracles. Moving on....
We were waiting all the stuff that needed to happen in order to get a court date. After the court date it would be another 4-6 weeks for an embassy date. We would arrive right before the embassy date and after bring the girls home. By the middle of Feb. we were still looking at another 6-8 weeks of waiting to get them. We got an email towards the end of Feb, on a Wednesday, that Aliyah Konjit was admitted to the hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She was not eating and generally sick. They were running tests. We were beside ourselves - we could do nothing as our precious, tiny baby was sick in a hospital half a world away. We prayed all night Wed. and all day Thursday. We made the decision, after much prayer, for Isaac to go to her in Ethiopia. We bought the ticket Thursday at 4pm and Isaac was on the first flight out Friday AM. See old posts to read about packing for an international flight in a few hours....
Isaac got there late Saturday night and the next morning went to the hospital to see Aliyah Konjit. Within 20 minutes of singing and praying with her, Aliyah was cooing. The nannies with her were amazed as they'd never seen her like that.
The story has so many other parts to it but basically it was decided that the girls needed to be medically expedited so they could get home as they were so tiny and medically fragile. I got the email from Isaac that I could fly over there to meet him within 8 days and we could bring the girls home in a little over 2 weeks. There was SO MUCH rejoicing in America when we got that news! Isaac spent the mornings with Aliyah in the hospital and the afternoons with Ariel at the orphanage. Aliyah was discharged 3 days after isaac got there so then he spent 8 hours a day at the orphanage, holding the girls the entire time. The nannies would just shake their heads at the white man sitting on the bed holding his babies for 8 hours every day. The above picture is the one i received from nannies at the orphanage of Isaac holding our girls on 3/9/08. Looking at the picture - Aliyah Konjit is on the left and Ariel Tarikua is on the right. compare them with the other picture of them less than 2 weeks later, home for 5 days. They were already doing so much better.
There is so much of this i must leave out for privacy sake but would love to tell people individually if they're interested....Our journey started in May of '07 when God moved on our hearts to adopt from Ethiopia. About a month later He led us to request twin girls. We realized we would be waiting a long time as twin girls are not a common referral CWA receives. We finished our paperwork on my birthday, Nov. 2nd and dug in for a LONG wait. Towards the end of January I was getting antsy. It had only been 3 months but i was getting impatient. It was a Sunday that i told Isaac we better pray and make sure about the whole "twin" thing. I was sure we would get a referral faster if we asked for only 1 baby. We made a choice to let go and continue with what we believed. It was that Thursday we received the call about our twin girls. They were only 2 and half weeks old and we instantly knew they were ours. They were tiny, fragile, and had been through so much in their short lives but we knew they were our miracles. Moving on....
We were waiting all the stuff that needed to happen in order to get a court date. After the court date it would be another 4-6 weeks for an embassy date. We would arrive right before the embassy date and after bring the girls home. By the middle of Feb. we were still looking at another 6-8 weeks of waiting to get them. We got an email towards the end of Feb, on a Wednesday, that Aliyah Konjit was admitted to the hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She was not eating and generally sick. They were running tests. We were beside ourselves - we could do nothing as our precious, tiny baby was sick in a hospital half a world away. We prayed all night Wed. and all day Thursday. We made the decision, after much prayer, for Isaac to go to her in Ethiopia. We bought the ticket Thursday at 4pm and Isaac was on the first flight out Friday AM. See old posts to read about packing for an international flight in a few hours....
Isaac got there late Saturday night and the next morning went to the hospital to see Aliyah Konjit. Within 20 minutes of singing and praying with her, Aliyah was cooing. The nannies with her were amazed as they'd never seen her like that.
The story has so many other parts to it but basically it was decided that the girls needed to be medically expedited so they could get home as they were so tiny and medically fragile. I got the email from Isaac that I could fly over there to meet him within 8 days and we could bring the girls home in a little over 2 weeks. There was SO MUCH rejoicing in America when we got that news! Isaac spent the mornings with Aliyah in the hospital and the afternoons with Ariel at the orphanage. Aliyah was discharged 3 days after isaac got there so then he spent 8 hours a day at the orphanage, holding the girls the entire time. The nannies would just shake their heads at the white man sitting on the bed holding his babies for 8 hours every day. The above picture is the one i received from nannies at the orphanage of Isaac holding our girls on 3/9/08. Looking at the picture - Aliyah Konjit is on the left and Ariel Tarikua is on the right. compare them with the other picture of them less than 2 weeks later, home for 5 days. They were already doing so much better.
My friend Claire was already planning on going with us to Ethiopia when we went to get the girls. We realized it would be such a help to have someone with us but never really understood just how important she would turn out to be in this whole thing.
I'm out of time for now....more later.....
1 comment:
It is so wonderful to read your story and get updated pictures of the girls. Thank you for sharing.
Love to you all
Auntie AZ
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