Day 2 - getting to know you

Today, being Sunday, we awoke and had the pleasure of attending the International Evangelical Church here in Addis.  It was awesome to see so many nations gathered in one place for worship.  I imagine that that was a mere small window into what it will be like in heaven as we worship in one accord.  Beautiful faces of many nations.  You can imagine my surprise then when the worship team began to sing "All praise to God", which is a song from my dearest friends Billy and Cindy Foote.  I wept.  I know their heart for the nations and I know how excited that they would be to know their songs have made it to Ethiopia.

From there, we went to lunch was delicious.  Of course, the best part of every meal is the fellowship with the other families.  We are blessed by precious families in our midst ... precious families with precious kids!

From there we went to the Transitional Home to see our Z.  When we arrived he was nowhere to be found.  We soon found out that he was out seeing a children's Exhibition and having a picnic with the social worker/staff from the older children's transitional home.  Though we were sad he wasn't yet there, to know they do such amazing things with our kids is refreshing.

Our awesome guides went looking for him and he arrived about an hour later.  I could tell he'd been having a good time.  He was also wearing an outfit we had sent him in a care package.  Love it!
He came in and was again unsure of us.  That only lasted a few minutes though as he quickly went to work playing ball and kicking us the blow up beach ball that we had on hand.

He loves to giggle and his smile is radiant.  His eyes are amazingly beautiful and expressive.
For times sake ... as we are about to leave to go to a traditional Ethiopian restaurant, I wanted to post a few things we learned about our little boy today.

1.  He is assertive.  He kept telling us "Umptuh" as he would reach for toys.  I asked Yonas our guide and he said that meant "bring it" ... in other words - give it to me.
2. He can count .. in english .. I know to four at least
3. He tells us "kwoss" when he wants the ball.  We soon learned that is the Amharic word for it.  duh!!
4. He doesn't like help and is like any other 3 year old "I do it myself" ... only his eyes and his twist of the shoulders tell us so.
5. He loves stickers

The highlight for me today was at one point when Doug was acting like he was going to get Z.  He was doing tickle fingers and saying "I'm gonna get you".  Z turned to me, put his hands up (asking me to hold him).  I grabbed him up in my arms and he held on tight like a little monkey.  As I ran away with him he giggled in delight.  

Every moment counts!  

While I can't show you photos yet our boy, I'll put a few in here of the kids.  They are doing AMAZING!  Canyon is quite in his element and has LOVED playing with the older kids at the transitional home.  Both them and he have quite the soccer skills and language is no barrier when it comes to "futball".  Dakota is doing awesome too.  She stays right by Z's side and is always telling him in English what things are.  Super fun watching my kids thrive and come alive here in Ethiopia.

Lunch

Shopping at the "post office"

Having fun.  There is our boy ... 

I ran into a boy I met in February in the "post office" (shopping area).  His name is Tesfay.  We both recognized one another