Our First Trip to Ethiopia!

Thank you so much for your patience to those of you who frequently look at our blog and find no updates!  Life has been busy and I have not been as consistent as I would like with updates.  Sorry!
 
Well, we now have a big update because on April 8th, we got the call with our court date and were told that we needed to be in Ethiopia at least 3 days prior to our court date of April 22nd.  So, we hurriedly got our flights arranged and travel plans set and began preparing for our long-awaited first trip to Ethiopia.  We left Sunday, April 13th, in order to have enough time time to drive from Louisville to Greeley, CO, where Jenny's parents live.  We arrived safely in Colorado and were able to spend 2 days getting our other 3 kids situated with their Paps and Grams before we took a red-eye flight out of Denver late on the night of April 16th.  We then had a total travel time of about 24 hours to Ethiopia and made it safely into Addis Ababa at about 7 AM Friday, the 18th.

Our brother-in-law, Stephen, picked us up from the airport and we stayed with the Kennedys during our stay in Ethiopia (Jenny's sister, Shelley's family), which was a huge blessing to us!  We survived jet-lag pretty well the first day and enjoyed seeing some of downtown Addis and also the area around where the Kennedys live.  We finished the day by going to a place with Stephen and Shelley where we got to see some monkeys and then have dinner and our first yummy Ethiopian Macchiato. ;-)

After getting settled in our first day, we were able to go to James's orphanage the next morning.  It was so amazing to get to see James in person the first time and get to spend time playing with him.  He was a bit timid at first, but once we pulled out some matchbox cars, he warmed up pretty quickly. :-)  We are so glad that now that we have been to court, we are able to post pictures of our boy!  Excited for you to get to see what James looks like!

We got to spend about 2 hours with James, and then we had to leave.
The next day we went to church in the countryside with Stephen and Shelley.  It was such a neat experience.  Adam was even asked to preach the sermon! ;-)  He did a great job!

We were so blessed to be able to worship with other believers in Ethiopia!  It was amazing to see visibly that our God is so wonderful and powerful in the way that He works in the hearts of His people.  He is God over all the earth and isn't bound by distance, language, or any obstacles.  The fact that He has His people spread throughout all the world and that He is actively working in the lives of his people all over the world is amazing to think about.  We were so encouraged to get to see a piece of this in Ethiopia!

On Monday, we got to see our James again at the orphanage.  We took some play-doh (as per my sister, Kelli's suggestion.  Way to go Kel!) to play with him, and he was intrigued by it and enjoyed playing with it for quite some time:

The front gate to the orphanage:

James's first "selfie" ;-)

It was really sweet, on this day, James was sitting with Adam and leaning his head against him.

The next day we had our court date.  We weren't sure what to expect, but we were surprised that it wasn't a big deal.  We were in the courtroom for about 5 minutes and were asked a few basic questions and then told that once court was done that Sete (James) would be ours and that there would be no reversing things after that. ;-)  We praise God that things with court went so smoothly!

Here we are waiting our turn:

We then got to see James one last time before we left Ethiopia.  We were thankful to be spending more time with him, but we were usually in the room with a number of other orphanage staff most of the time, so by our 3rd time there, we both felt like we were more and more looking forward to bringing James home with us and having him just to ourselves. ;-)  We are thankful, though, that James seemed like he was comfortable with the orphanage staff and that they are taking good care of him while we are waiting for the process to be final and for our second trip to bring him home.  We are excited to get to fully make him a "Grusy" upon our next trip.  Adam said, "I just can't wait to put James in Grusy clothes, and to take him home and make him a full Grusy!" :-)

Here are some other cool experiences that we had while we were in Ethiopia:
getting to see a sheep slaughtered for the Easter holiday, eating raw sheep meat, spending precious time with our family in Ethiopia and being so encouraged by the Gospel work that they are doing, getting to have special time with our nieces, going to the country-side and seeing a village there, getting to go to a number of Ethiopian homes to have authentic Ethiopian food and fellowship, having Ethiopian coffee numerous times, and experiencing the crazy driving/traffic and the culture in Ethiopia.

We were only in Ethiopia for 1 week, but with all that we did, it felt like we were there longer!  We are so thankful to our good God, who gave us travel mercies, gave us sweet fellowship with family and fellow believers, and gave us sweet time with our son James.  We praise God that He has been sustaining James and keeping him safe, and that God is preparing the way for us to go back to Ethiopia to bring him home and fully make him a "Grusy."

Thank you for your prayers and support of our family!  We are so excited to share this post of pictures and details with you and we hope you are encouraged to see what God is doing and the way that He is faithfully working out His perfect plan in our family!