Ethiopia has opposite days and nights from us – they are 10 hours ahead. This means that tonight while I sleep our children will receive their packages. They will get to open up those ziplock bags and hopefully they will feel all of the love that we poured into them. We sent the packages and the videos with a family that is in Ethiopia right now getting ready to bring home their newest addition – a little boy! And this family is delivering our love to our children and taking pictures for us.

I keep thinking about it. How will our kids respond to this? While we are hoping they will feel excited and loved and special, I am sure they are also feeling scared and unsure and sad. They are both joining a new family and losing their old one. They are rejoicing at the chance for a new life in a new country, and grieving the loss of their homeland and their people. We are feeling so blessed to be able to adopt these beautiful children, and yes they are blessed to be able to leave the orphanage and join our family, but all of this blessing stems out of sorrow. The sorrow of losing their mother and father. The sorrow of poverty.

For our adoption video, I chose the song Beautiful Things by Gungor as the background music.

Here are the lyrics….

All this pain

I wonder if I’ll ever find my way

I wonder if my life could really change at all

All this earth

Could all that is lost ever be found

Could a garden come up from this ground at all
You make beautiful things

You make beautiful things out of the dust

You make beautiful things

You make beautiful things out of us
All around Hope is springing up from this old ground

Out of chaos life is being found in You

This is my prayer for my children. That God would make beautiful things spring up out of the dust of their lives. That He would trade their ashes for beauty, their sorrow for rejoicing. That our family can be a place of healing and fill their lives with joy.

Here is the letter that we included with our package. This is what my children will be reading tonight while I sleep.

To Our Dear Beautiful Children,

We are so excited that you will get to be a part of our family. We have been praying for you for a long time now. The first time we heard your names and saw your pictures, our hearts melted! We can hardly wait to see you and give you a hug! You will love living with us and we already love you. There is so much we would like to tell you. We can’t wait for you to meet your new sister Hannah (she is 7 years old) and your new brother Joel (he is 10 years old). Both of them are so excited to meet you!

We promise that we will always love you and take good care of you. We are so happy that you will be a part of our family. Even though you don’t know us yet, we already consider you to be our precious children who we love with all of our hearts. We pray for you every day. We look at your pictures all the time and hope that you are happy and have everything you need. We are working hard to come get you soon and bring you home with us. We promise that we will not leave you there, we will come get you and love you forever.

We live in a small town. We have lots of land for you to play on and a swimming pool to swim in. We sent you some pictures of us and Joel and Hannah and our house. We know that having a new family is probably scary but do not be afraid. We will always keep you safe and give you what you need and love you and take care of you. You are so special to us and so precious. Together we will be a very happy family. We will have a lot of fun together and will play a lot of games together and watch movies and read books and laugh together a lot. When you are sad we will wipe away your tears and give you hugs and hold you close until you feel better.

We love you so much our two handsome boys and our beautiful girl. We will never stop loving you. We are coming soon.

Love,

Mommy and Daddy

By the way, my husband wrote that letter. Isn’t he an amazing man?

Blessings!

Natalie