Meaning of our lil' one's name...

Josiah- The fire of the Lord
His history is contained in 2 Kings 22, 23. He stands foremost among all the kings of the line of David for unswerving loyalty to Jehovah (23:25).
He “did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in all the way of David his father.” He ascended the throne at the early age of eight years, At that age he devoted himself to
God. (2 Chronicles 34:3; comp. Jeremiah 25:3, 11, 29).

Desalegn- I am happy!! :)

Another Update

We wanted to give you all an update about how this whole referral process has worked. In our own minds, we thought that Ana would get the phone call while Sam was at work and she would find some creative way to tell me when I got home. Well.........not so much! About 3 weeks prior to being matched, our agency notified us that the volume of applicants was increasing and the process was being slowed. Trying to change the frame of mind we were in was no easy task. We had set our hearts on starting our families by this summer/early fall, but now it seemed very unlikely. With minimal referrals occurring with our agency and families having to wait longer than expected, we began to change our way of thinking to NOT get our hopes up...

But who says our God can't change that?

At 2:35pm, July 18th 2008, our lives changed! Sam was at home playing his guitar and trying to become the next Carlos Santana...haha...when the phone rang. Thinking nothing of it, he slowly picked it up and noticed the caller ID said America Wo...it cut off the last part of the name. This put him in a state of shock. He thought they were wanting him to update paperwork since we had been in the process for over a year (which is not uncommon). But within a minute his cell phone rang, and sure enough it was the agency rep calling to relay some awesome news!

She asked, "Is this Samuel?" and then she said "Is Ana with you?"...Right then my heart shot through my esophagus and straight into my stomach. It was pounding LOUD and HARD! She went on to tell me that they had our referral and that they were going to email it to us in the next 5 mins. Not knowing what to do, Sam dropped to his knees and began to cry. His emotions had overcome his state of feeling and he was about to go relay the best news of his life.

Telling Ana........

This was the most difficult drive I ever had to make. Ana was at work at a nearby mall, and she was with a customer when I arrived. I didn't know what to do, how to get her away, what to say, how to explain it, so I simply asked her manager to release her for a second. I then told her I could not tell her inside of the store, so we stepped outside. I then looked her in the face and said "Babe guess what??? We got matched!!! We got our referral!!!" Ana freaked out!

Opening the E-mail....When we got home we both ran upstairs to our computer and anxiously tried to log-in as fast as we could. Wanting to capture it all on tape, we set up the video recorder as we opened the email. After seeing the initial letter we clicked through the links that eventually led to a big-eyed, gentle little boy, who's eyes were calling out to us to come get him. He was ours...all ours! After we cried and walked around our house shocked, we celebrated the addition of our new baby GIRL!....but then some confusion took place....

After sending an email to our agency thanking them for our new baby girl, they replied with an email stating they were sorry for the confusion, but little Desalegn was a baby BOY! Here we go!...since this was a Friday, the agency closed until Monday morning. Friday-Sunday were the longest 2.5 days of our lives! After talking with the agency, we got the confirmation that he is indeed a boy and that we could be confident in that. So in one weekend we had a little baby girl and boy! HAHA!

We now find ourselves in a position we are VERY familiar with....WAITING! Since the courts in Ethiopia close for a period of time at the end of each summer, we cannot get anything finalized until they re-open in the fall. So we are in the midst of celebrating, preparing, chatting, blogging, and crying (of course, well Ana anyways). We hope this clears some questions you all may have!

The Wait is OVER!!! We Got Matched!!!!

( these pics were after we told our friends & family)

On July 18th at 2:35pm, we recieved our referral from AWAA! We are excited and there is more to come. We got a 2 month old baby boy! He's healthy and looks mazing! He's perfect! Praise God! We'll be sharring more soon!