March 19th, US Embassy

Hi – Our interview at the Embassy was this morning and it went really well. Simple, to the point, and after months of red tape, there it was, “Congratulations.” Lulu’s VISA will be ready Wednesday morning and then we are all set to bring her home!

Our days have been good, hard and harder still in places, but then some really beautiful things as well. It is definitely a challenge having a one-year-old wanting to be down perfecting her walk while we are in places less than toddler friendly. My fever keeps resurfacing, which is strange and total lame.sauce. as Emma says, so praying for a good night’s rest at some point. 🙂 Lulu is actually sleeping the best out of all of us – she is a great sleeper. She is not a fan of eating, however, and that has been a challenge for us. Today after our Embassy appointment we went back to the House of Hope and I was able to spend time with one of Lu’s favorite nannies. She tried to feed her as well, and said through the translator that Lu gives them a hard time with eating, so it wasn’t just us. Finally by way of a combination of singing to her, rocking her, and letting her play with a cell phone we managed to shovel a bowl of cereal down her.

Our time today at the House of Hope was such an incredible experience- we were there for a couple of hours and had so much more time to spend with all of the kids. Emma was able to play soccer with some of the older children and then they ended up inviting her and the daughter of another family to eat lunch with them. As us parents stood outside of that little lunch room watching them interact and break bread with these precious faces had tears streaming down my face. THIS was the experience we had dreamed of for Emma, and a great reminder in the hard moments of international travel of exactly why we chose to bring her on this trip.

One of the other sweetest things for us today was seeing how loved Lulu is by all of the nannies, staff and children at HoH. They flocked to her when we arrived, and one young girl in-particular made my day. She is the daughter of our friends, the Lains, another family we met on our court trip in November and bonds were birthed over prayer and waiting on God. She immediatley came up and grabbed Lulu and kissed all over her. I said, “hi Dibora!” and then said the names of her mommy, daddy, brother and sister waiting anxiously to bring her home. She disappeared and came running back to me with a photo of her with her forever-family, pointing to each member and saying their names back to me. When they kids were eating lunch Dibora sat near Emma and I saw her keep reaching over and putting her arm around Emma in friendship and then it came time for us to leave she ran to me with the best hug. Seriously these kids are amazing. And get this- as I am sitting here typing this update I just heard Dibora’s family cleared this morning – they can come bring that beautiful girl home now!!!

I will update more soon – thank you for checking in on us. We miss having more internet access this trip, but it is also helping us to focus on our time here and our girls. We will update with photos once we get back to the airport on Thursday evening. We are all missing Asher fiercely – and watch videos of him on our phones every day. I hope my parents are surviving their week with him!

xo,

-Sarah