Joel has always been my “sickly” boy. He seems to catch everything first and always ends up worse than everyone else in our family. Being in Ethiopia has been hard on his system. Last week he was sick for 3 days. Really sick. Then he seemed to rally and has been doing much better. But, every day, he seems to have periods of stomach issues. Sometimes manageable. Sometimes horrible. My poor boy! He has spent a lot of time here lying in bed.

Yesterday morning he woke up throwing up again. He felt miserable until mid-afternoon. Then he got up out of bed and had a great evening. This morning, he woke up sick again! We have just started keeping a bucket next to his bed. We ended up calling a doctor here. The doctor was wonderful and told us to go down to the pharmacy and get an antibiotic that should kill whatever bug Joel has in his gut. He told us the dose and how often to administer it and said that the pharmacy should just give it to us. Then, as I was leaving the house, Jessie mentioned to me that if the pharmacist happens to ask if I am a doctor, just say yes! I went to the pharmacy and asked for my antibiotic. The pharmacist says with a huge grin on his face, “Where is your prescription? I need a legal prescription to give you this.” I just smiled, shook my finger at him and said, “No you don’t!” He started laughing. Then he said, “Well, you must be a medical professional yourself, then. What are you – a doctor or a nurse?” I decided to just go with nurse. I didn’t want to oversell myself too much! And one of my best friends is a nurse, so that kind of counts, right? The pharmacist then reaches into his rather well-stocked medicine cabinet and pulls out what I needed. We visited for a while. He asked where I was from and what I was doing here in Addis. His name is Itafa. He told me to come back if I need anything else. I was just glad he didn’t ask me any medical questions!

After the pharmacy, I went searching for an ATM. There are ATMs every few blocks, but finding one that is not out of service or out of money is the tricky part. And since no one takes VISA here and instead expects payments in cash, finding a working ATM is something we do every few days. Today, we only had to go to 6 machines before I found one where I could withdraw my money.

One more stop on our way home – Starbucks! Well, it is actually called Kaldi’s Coffee, but it tastes just like Starbucks. We went through the drive-through. This means we pulled into the parking lot and backed into a parking spot. One of the employees then comes out to take our order and brings us our coffee. 5 caramel mochas for a total of $6. Hmmmm….it might just be better than Starbucks at that price!

Of course, we also visited our kids today. A few days ago, through a translator, we asked them about changing their names. We told them the names we had picked out for them and asked what they thought. It was unanimous! They all want to have “American” names and have since been calling themselves Abigail, Micah and Levi. Here they are practicing their alphabet and writing their names.

Tonight as you sleep, we will be heading to court. We have an appointment at 2:00pm Wednesday which will be 4:00am your time. Please be praying that either the paper that we have been waiting on will be there, or that the judge will decide to give us a court date without that paper. Also, that our court date would be SOON! We are hoping to get more information about our petition for Naomi during our meeting with the judge, too. Lots to pray about!

Blessings!

Natalie

PRAYER REQUESTS

*Joel’s health

*That we would find favor with the judge during our meeting

*That we will get our court date assigned

*Our petition for Naomi