Transition

I have to say once God calls you to adopt he is there right beside you no matter what the challenges might be. We had a few along the way but he always made the path a lot less bumpy.

Most of you know we adopted Hannah at 10 mo. old from China and her adoption was so easy...she instantly bonded with me. I can't explain how easy she was as a baby/toddler. She was just a gift from God to us as new parents. Fast forward to this next adoption. Mahlet is either 10 or 11 yrs. old (we are not quite sure) and was not what I had planned on when we began this journey for a second child. Our initial request was for an infant girl 0-12 months old. Once we saw Mahlet's photo on the waiting children's list we knew she was the child for our family. And God moved mountains to get us to her in record time. We received Mahlet's referral Feb. 3rd and we were assigned a court date of May 8th and if we passed we would have traveled at the end of May. Well God apparently didn't want us to be apart that long as our court date got miraculously moved up to March 26th and we ended up passing on March 27th because the judge wanted to talk to Mahlet (a first for a judge wanting to meet with an older child...I will share more on this later). We only had two weeks notice that we would be traveling to bring her home. This made for an interesting couple of weeks as we had to get her room ready, purchase our airline tickets, get things worked out with family that would be taking care of Hannah and dealing with very disorganized govt. agencies. We actually ended up getting our Senator involved to make sure our immigration paperwork got to the embassy in Addis Ababa on time.

Everything worked out and we are now at home transitioning from a family of three to four. It has gone remarkably well. The girls really bonded well quite quickly and now Hannah always wants to sleep in Mahlet's room (no problem because Mahlet has a trundle bed) and Mahlet wants her sister with her all the time. Hannah has now calls her sister Mahlee (Molly). I think this is what we we will all call her as nobody can seem to pronounce her name correctly.

Back to why the judge wanted to meet with Mahlet. I learned from Duni that Mahlet had turned down 3 families before us. I knew of one before we traveled but when I heard 3 I was a bit blown away. Duni told me that Mahlet was very grounded in her faith and was holding out for the family God had planned for her. I am so humbled to have such a child such as her. I am so amazed by my God and how he works. There are no words to describe how how blessed I feel. I have a wonderful husband and two beautiful girls. Yes, we have some language barriers but love is definitely a universal language and we are so thankful for the gift of adoption.
Blessings,
Bliss