Ethiopia Court Trip-Day 1...

It's been less than 24 hours since we have been back on US soil and I am already ready to go back to Ethiopia!  I woke up this morning around 5am (due to the awesome jet lag that I have) and couldn't sleep, so I began to look at all of the comments that everyone had left us on our facebook.  I immediately began to cry as I read through them.  God has blessed us with encouragement throughout this journey from so many people and it just blows me away.

I also felt teary eyed for my son who is half way around the world waiting for us to pick him up and for all the other orphans we have met who are still waiting to be matched with their forever family.  It's a lot to process and I hope that in the next few weeks, I will be able to do just that...process all that was experienced and felt in a short 4 days.  In the mean time, I am going to do my best to paint the best picture of our adventure.

Let me just say, the first night was quite the adventure!  We traveled about 8 hours to Germany on an awesome plane, stopped for a 3 hour layover in Germany, and then continued onto Ethiopia, which was about another 8 hour flight.  By the time we got off the plane, we were ready for sleep and a shower!  We got off the plane, got our visas, exchanged our money and headed to the front of the airport to wait for our ride.

Our ride...hmm...let me just pause to clarify something for the remainder of these blog posts from our trip that I will be writing this week.  MY MOM HASN'T TRAVELED OUT OF THE COUNTRY IN OVER 40 YEARS, AND SHE HAS NEVER BEEN TO A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY.  Having spent so much time in Honduras, I knew she was in for an adventure and knew that it was going to create some crazy memories.

Our adoption agency had told us that they would be waiting with a sign in the airport.  I always wanted a sign by the way...that was exciting.  However, when we came out, there was no sign to be found.  We stood there looking like 3 lost Americans and briefly started to panic.  After a few minutes, a random man asked if we were waiting for our agency, to which we replied yes, and he pointed outside.  It was pitch black outside.

As we got closer to the window, we saw a young man with his face practically smushed against the window with a handwritten sign that had our agency's name on it.  For a second I remembered the advice of a person earlier that day... "Don't get into any car with someone you aren't sure if they are supposed to be picking you up.  You know you could get killed that way!"  As quickly as that entered my mind, it went right out as the man introduced himself to us as Abel (who would soon become an awesome friend), and loaded us and all of our suitcases into the van.

We then met our driver.  Our driver was wearing this scarf that was almost completely wrapped around his head so that you basically could only see his eyes.  Let's just say that he didn't exactly give off a vibe of safety!  Nevertheless, we jumped into the car, trusting two men whom we had just met, and prayed to Jesus that we would get there in one piece.

Abel gave us an itinerary as soon as we got in the car and told us that he would pick us up around 8:30am for church the next day.  And then the driver pulled over and Abel got out of the car and our driver continued to drive us.  Did I mention that the driver didn't speak any English?  Oh...and did I mention that he basically had his entire face covered with just his eyes showing?  Oh...and that we didn't have any clue where we were going?  And my mom...

I tried to remain as calm as I could, because I knew my mom was panicking!  While my face looked calm, in my heart I was praying that we weren't the new characters for some Ethiopian horror film we didn't know was being taped!  We traveled down a bunch of roads weaving in and out of people and other cars (in typical third world fashion), and continued on until our driver took a right hand turn down an alley.  I will pause to say, later on in the week my  mother told us that at that point she was praying "Sweet Jesus...please take me now!"

Surprisingly, our guest house was actually at the end of the road and as soon as we arrived, we were greeted by the some of the nicest people we have ever met who would become family to us for the four days were were there.  We had made it...we weren't a part of some horror film (although if we could have captured the look on my mother's face, we probably could have created a film that people would spend a lot of money on!), and we had survived the night that would be the start of a week that would change our life.

Here is the funniest part.  A couple of days later, we had a driver Mulu, who drove us almost 3 hours to meet our son for the first time.  He was the sweetest man ever.  As we were eating lunch that day, I looked across the table and caught Mulu's eyes.  And then it dawned on me.  I turned to the social worker and said, "Can you ask Mulu if he was the one that picked us up at the airport when we came in late Saturday night?"  She asked and Mulu said, "Of course."  I started laughing.  "Why did you have that crazy scarf around your head. You totally freaked us out.  We thought our lives were over!"  He started laughing and replied, "I was cold."

Yeah...it was like 70 degrees the night we flew in.  Mulu probably saw us coming and thought to himself..."This could be fun!"  We laughed about it all week long and by the end of our trip hated to say goodbye to a driver who had once scared the life out of us and now had become a friend.    When we crawled into bed that first night, we thanked God we had made it and anticipated we were in for the ride of our lives!

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