Bearded Boys

October in Pictures

We've had a busy month so far! It started out with Luke's Dedication/Open House weekend, which was a lot of fun. Here's Luke meeting his Great Grandma Dirks...

and Great Grandpa Dirks!

Here's the Ethiopian flag cake I made for the open house.

Hanging out with Grandpa.

We had our first snow of the season and Isaac was very excited to play in it!

My first snow!

Luke got his "Welcome to the United States" book in the mail. Look how happy he is to be here!

Isaac started AWANA and is loving being a cubby!
Hanging out in the dryer while Mommy folds clothes :)Superman pajamas!!

Ethiopia Highlight #2: Meeting our Compassion Kids

One of our favorite ministries to support is Compassion International. We love what they are doing around the world for so many kids. Eric started sponsoring Derar when he was in college. At that time Derar was about 7...

now he's 18!

When we were planning our trip to Ethiopia in March, we had contacted Compassion to arrange a visit with him, but then we had to cancel it when we lost our referral. So since we knew we wouldn't be going for a few months, we decided that we should start another Ethiopian sponsorship so we could meet her too! We asked Compassion if they had a young girl who lived close to Addis Ababa, and they gave us sweet Adanu! She is nine years old.
We had our visit scheduled for Tuesday, and they arrived at our guest house around noon. Both kids were really timid and quiet. It was a little hard to get them to open up. They came with Yoseph (a sponsor visit director), who translated, and each of their regional workers. While we talked, Derar was very honest with us and told us that he was considering Christianity, but had not decided whether he believes it yet. His family are not Christians, so it is a bigger deal for him to go down that road. We are grateful that he was willing to share this with us so we know how to pray for him. Adanu was really sweet and loved holding Luke. She clammed up part way through the visit and didn't want to do anymore talking, but it was nice to just be with her :) We went out to a restaurant for lunch, and then back to our guest house where we gave them their gifts and then it was time to say good-bye. I wish we would have given them their gifts at the beginning of the visit because I think they would have been less leary of us. :) Oh, well. I think Adanu might have had a previous sponsor, so she may have been seeing us as short-term sponsors. Sorry, Adanu, you're stuck with us for awhile! We gave them hugs and I gave Adanu a kiss on her forehead; then they got into the van and we waved at each other for about five minutes while the van driver tried to maneuver the van around in the small parking area. It was over too soon, but we are so glad we were able to meet them!

Eric and Derar (go Twins!)

Adanu, sleeping Luke, and me

In the van on the way to the restaurant.

Ethiopia Highlight #1: Meeting Luke!

I really want to blog a little about our trip, but I'm not much of a writer, so rather than taking you through the week day by day, I'm going to talk about a few of the highlights of the week. The first and best highlight (of course!) was meeting and holding our sweet boy! I know I will not even come close to capturing the emotion of this, but I will do my best.

We arrived in Ethiopia on Sunday, and we were told to be at the orphanage on Monday afternoon to pick him up and go through our paperwork. We knew this would likely be naptime for the babies, so we weren't surprised to find Luke sleeping. Here's our first glimpse of him.

This was a pretty amazing moment for me. Because of what happened with our first referral, I couldn't shake the idea that Luke just might not be there, or that he wasn't really ours. So seeing him sleeping in his little crib was beyond wonderful. I could have stood over his crib and wept, but I didn't want to get too emotional when I couldn't even pick him up yet! We stared at him for a few minutes and then tried to distract ourselves so he could sleep a little longer. We had a couple of care packages to deliver to some other babies and lots of pictures to take for the other families with our agency who were waiting to pass court, so we did that and played with the awake babies for maybe 45 minutes. Then one of the nannies decided we shouldn't have to wait anymore and woke Luke up for us! :) Luke wasn't very happy about this though. The nanny pulled out his going home outfit and went to work getting him all spiffed up for us. Poor Luke just cried the whole time. I rubbed his head and tried to soothe him. Finally he was dressed and I got to hold him in my arms. He settled down but then my tears came! It's a moment I'll always remember.

Eric was doing all the picture taking, so we didn't get a good one of him with Luke at the orphanage, but I did let Eric hold him...a little bit. :)

Naming Luke

I wanted to go into a little more detail on the name we chose. Many of you know that this is the same name that we had chosen for our first referral (Alazar). After losing that referral, we had a really hard time knowing what to do about a name. We've been asked many times over the last five months if we had chosen a name for the baby, and we would always say, "No, we're going to wait until we meet him to decide." Which was the truth - we really didn't know!

We struggled with feeling like we needed a new name for this new baby, but we couldn't come up with any that seemed to be right. In the end we decided that Luke Steven was the name we wanted to give our son, and even though we thought for a time that our son was supposed to be Alazar, God knew all along that it was to be this precious boy now sitting in my lap. This is Luke.

The name Luke means "bringer of light." As we considered the name, we did some reading about Luke in the Bible and realized his heart was much the same as ours. He demonstrates a great concern for the orphans, the widows, and the poor of the world, and he magnifies Jesus' call on us to care for them. Our prayer for Luke is that he will bring the light of Christ to those around him and that his heart will be burdened for the needs of the world.

His middle name, Steven, is in honor of my dad. I think my dad was quite a bringer of light himself to a lot of people. Though they won't meet until heaven, I hope that we can teach Luke the traits of loyalty, kindness, endurance, and integrity that my father modeled for me.

Lark Toys

Both boys are sleeping at the same time for more than 20 minutes! So I have time to post again! :)

Yesterday my mom and I took Isaac and Luke on a little road trip to Lark Toys, a nearby toy store/museum that was super fun! Since it was a week day, it was not crowded at all, so that made it even more fun! We also had a great time talking with one of the owners, who just turned in her paperwork to adopt from Ethiopia! Yay for that!

Grandma was taking all the pictures so unfortunately she didn't make it in any!

They have a great carousel that Isaac and I rode three times! So fun!

Isaac with a giant panda

Isaac in the teepee

And they have ice cream! He was one happy kid!

Me with my handsome boys (and the llamas). I had to put both of these pictures up because Luke looks so cute laughing.

Brothers