Thursday

Well it's been rough!  We are praying for a miracle today.  Basically the embassy reserves the right to insist on MORE investigations, even though they CLEARED us to come!  They made a mistake and never did re-investigate our cases at all.  AWAA has proof that they cleared all three families to come and get the kids, but they are not honoring that, so far.  Today is the day!  If we don't get embassy appointments today, we have to wait until next week to hear anything.  I hope to be able to update the blog later today with news of their decision.  This has nothing to do with ET and everything to do with the US.  AWAA and ET already investigated our cases and cleared us.  In light of the recent negative publicity, the US embassy has decided to re-investigate all the cases.  We were told this would happen with all the cases after ours.  Apparently it may happen with our cases as well.  Of course I want it all to be on the up and up, but I don't want it to take 8 weeks!  They should never have cleared us to come in the first place!

We are going to leave in a little while to go visit orphanages and shop.  Hopefully we all can enjoy the experience and do God's work without thinking of ourselves.  All in all, we are enjoying our time but wish we had that visa!  It would be much more fun to be here if we knew when we were going home!  We do know God has a plan, we just want to know what it is!

Thanks for your prayers and support!  Micah is wonderful  and slept better last night.  He's already growing and eating ET baby cereal which smells and tastes MUCH better than US baby cereal. He's very happy and seems to like us very much :).  He is pretty easy so far!  We are so blessed that all three of the kids are so great!  Lilly is 3 1/2 and does not even speak Amharic so nobody can understand her.  Yet she plays and plays and is totally distracting me right now as I type, trying to get my attention.  Jeremiah, the Beals son, is SO cute.  He has been sick the whole time we've had him here but is still so happy and smiley.  He is about a year old.  He is not keeping food down which is, of course, cause for concern.  We are all praying for him!
Anyway, it seems "mommy and daddy" language is universal and our kids are picking it up and flourishing. 

More later!