A Bunch of Firsts!

First time in McDonalds for breakfast with the Family!

First time strolling in the park with Mom.

First time in a swing, and loving it!

First time being prayed for with laying on of hands! (At his first baby shower.)


First time at church.

First Mat Time (Bible time with mom and kids)!

First time wearing a tricorn hat!

First time in the snow!


First time (of many to come) at a Campus Crusade retreat and first time meeting Asher, another little adopted guy from Ethiopia!

And First Official picture in his Zeke onesie!

Settling in

It's been such a fun week. We've waited so long to have Zeke in our family, the transition has been pretty smooth. It's been so fun introducing him to friends and family. And we're beginning to think he's a little extrovert! Smiling and leaning in with nearly everyone he meets. He definitely enjoys being the center of attention.

Ok, the hard part: JETLAGGED NEWBORN? Ok, we forgot how intensive newborn care can be but throw in the jetlag and it's even more interesting (read: no sleep). Our experienced adoptive parent friend warned us: give him 1 day for each hour of time change. So hopefully we'll be more normal in 10 days. The first night, he woke up at midnight and thought it was morning! I actually got a lot done from midnight to 7 am with him hanging out in the sling! God kept reminding me that he will provide what I need. So that helped me to chose to believe that the 2 hours I got that night was enough, and it was. I wasn't miserable the next day. I think i was still running on adrenalin. Since then, he's gradually shifted, waking up at 2am, 3:30am, 4am, and today 5am!!! It was glorious. This morning at 5, Dave and I sat and talked about the week. It was good alone time for the 3 of us, just like back in Africa.

We saw the International Adoption Specialist Doctor this week. She confirmed that Zeke seems amazingly healthy for an orphanage kid. That was good news. We'll find out more when his lab work is done. He's still wrestling with the congestion he had when we picked him up. Please pray that clears up. The doctor thought it was probably a virus and may take as long as 4 weeks to clear. Poor kid. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to bother him too much.

My parents were here this week doing all the cooking, entertaining the kids, and even helping Addie and Ellie plant a garden which they will be in charge of for the summer. They're thrilled of course. We took them to the airport this morning and then I made my first Costco run with 4 children. God smiled on us and Zeke cooed happily in the carseat the whole time! Victory! I know the reality of having a newborn around will really hit now that they're gone. They were a huge help.

Here are a few pics of our first week at home:

Welcome to America, Zeker!

We are home and Zeke is happy! We had a warm welcome at in the Washington DC airport by our country's leaders ;)

and then an even warmer welcome at the LA airport by Mark and Kristen Michaelian and their family and Scott and Ashlee Harry and their family.



As we arrived home, Addie, Ellie, Jackson, and Grandpa and Grandma were out in the front yard with some of the neighbors cheering. There was a big "Welcome Home, Zeke" banner across the garage. Here's our first family pic with Zeke!


Zeke has been smiley and giggly since we got here. He must know he's home!
Last night was a bit short as he woke up at 2 and thought it was morning, but generally we're all just really happy to be home. This morning's shower was pure bliss. Unlimited hot water!! and the food!! Raw veggies to our heart's content. High speed internet!! These things we no longer take for granted. :)
Thanks for the calls and visits. It's been so fun to celebrate with everyone the "birth" of our new son, Zeke!

Here are a few more pics for your enjoyment!
First time in a carseat! Surrounded by beautiful American girls (and Scott)!


Meeting Grandma Sue and Grandpa Mel


Getting to know his siblings.




A few of his first visitors.



A few people have been asking, so how big is he? We finally weighed him this morning and he's 19 pounds!! His latest nickname is the "Chocolate Chunk". And it fits. He's 6 months old, but most of the 6 months clothes I brought are too small. Not what we'd expect from an orphanage kid. We're thankful God tenderly cared for him through the Sisters in the orphanage. All things considered, he's a healthy little guy. We take him for his first appointment with the International Adoption Doctor on Tuesday, so we'll know more then.
Thanks again for being apart of all this. Joys shared are multiplied!
To God be the Glory!
The Michaelian's

God does it again!

Yep! That's right! Despite the consulate's prediction that it would be monday or tuesday, we got Zeke's visa this morning and are now sitting in the Nairobi airport waiting to fly to Addis Ababa. We leave there at 10:15pm and arrive in DC sometime Saturday morning having gained 7 hours. Then we layover for 8 hours and fly to LA. We'll try to stand by for an earlier flight.

We've been staying at a Catholic Retreat Center here in Nairobi called Savelberg. It is dedicated to a man named Joseph Savelberg. He was known for his dependence on God's providence and his motto was, "God has helped. God is still helping. God will always help." That has been our theme this week and He has proven himself again! What an amazing God we serve! Powerful enough to cut through the bureaucratic red tape of even the United States of America! ")

Please pray for our flights and for Zeke's traveling attitude. :) We're almost there!

Safari and Slum

Today we had some discretionary time as we wait for Zeke's Visa to be processed. We went on a Safari Walk near the Nairobi National Park and then drove through Kibera Slum, the second largest in the world. Here are some pics of Zeke wearing his first USC gear and some of what we captured today on our outing...

Visa Interview

We had our visa interview at the US Embassy this morning. It went smoothly and the guy was really helpful. He said they will try to expedite our deal so we can make our plane friday night, but the background check for the Adam Walsch deal is not dependent on them but on the Immigration dept in the states. He thinks there is a less than 50% chance of it getting done by Friday. He compasionately asked us to plan on Monday or Tuesday, but said they'd do the best they could. We are cautiously optimistic, however, because we know what he doesn't - all of you are praying!! Thanks for continuing to lift us up.

Here are some pics from last night. We had dinner at our friends' Sammy and Celestine's house and they made us a traditional Kenyan meal, or I guess they say THE traditional Kenyan meal. It's called "ugali". Sammy says Kenyan men say, "You don't have food" if you don't serve ugali. Ugali is a dense bready-like cake made of corn flour and water and cooked on the stove top. You break off pieces and dip it in stew and veggies. We had a beef stew and a spinach dish do dip it in. It was delicious.



We were pretty exhausted after our big day yesterday. We think Zeke is feeling pretty comfortable with us! (see below)


Update on his health: he's adjusting well to the new formula. Unfortunately he eats way more than your average 6 month old so we're running out of the formula we brought and will have to buy some here. So that means another transition. Pray it's not major! His congestion seems better but is still very present. He coughed a bunch last night and kept us all up for quite a while. We're happy to be done with our end of the business stuff to we can go home and rest this afternoon. By the way, if you're ever in Nairobi, check out the Savanna Coffee Lounge across the street from the US Embassy. It's on UN grounds and is above the workout club where all the UN staff workout. It is so pleasant here, great food and coffee and tea for very reasonable prices and best of all- high speed internet!!! I mean like the same speed as home! It's a wonderful thing. Love you all!

Another Day in Nairobi

We had an early morning as we started the business side of things in Nairobi today. Dave and Philip, our driver, dropped me off at the International Organization for Migration (IOM) Medical clinic to get Zeke's medical exam done for the visa. That was a long day of jiggling a fussy baby while waiting in various waiting rooms. We met some cool people, though, all also getting meds done for visas to the US. We talked for quite a while with a family from Rwanda who knew of Zeke's orphanage and are trying to immigrate to Indiana. We eventually got his report around 2pm. Meanwhile, Dave was at the US Embassy getting information and all the forms we need to fill out. They asked us to come tomorrow morning at 8am for our interview. It will be so wonderful to have that step done. Then all we need is to wait for the Adam Walsch check to come back, and we're out of here. I think there is a good chance (because of God) that we may make our plane on Friday evening. We are having a wonderful time here in Africa, but we are seriously missing our other 3 kids! We cried yesterday as we saw pictures of them hunting easter eggs on email. WE LOVE YOU, ADDIE, ELLIE, AND JACKSON! Please pray God does put a rush on the Adam Walsh business, so we can get home this weekend.

Here are a few more pics of our fun day out yesterday.



We went to a giraffe preserve and a preserve for baby orphaned elephants. So cute.


Here's Dave and Philip, our driver. We really enjoy him alot. He's a beliver as well. Our fellowship has been rich.


Here we are with Otto. Well, that's what he told us to call him since we can't pronounce his name. He is a fellow guest at our guest house and has a pretty amazing story. He is from Sudan and is here hunkering down in this quiet little retreat center to finish the final draft of the Old Testament which he has been translating into his tribe's language, Shiluc (my spelling:)). He started in 1990! The first 5 years he spent learning Hebrew. The past 15 have been spent doing the translation. This month he is here doing the proofreading. Each night at dinner we ask, "How was your reading today?" He says whenever he gets stir-crazy from reading so long, he dances! He's a really cool guy. His father was one of the first 8 people to believe in Christ in his tribe. That was in 1909, when he was 8 years old. He said some missionaries came to the village next door and the kids flocked to them. His father became an evangelist. He raised his kids to know Christ, and now here's Otto, a bible translator. His tribe had a coming of age ceremony where they would mark their faces (using fish hooks and razor blades!) with round scars across the brow. Otto says he is of the last generation to do this, as they've realized it causes division among tribes. Last night at dinner, we were discussing his translation work and Dave asked him if he's ever heard of the Jesus Film, the film Crusade has made and translated into over 1000 languages. Otto lit up and said, "That is the first thing I ever translated into Shiluc!" Amazing!! We are eating dinner with the guy who translated the Jesus Film into Shiluc! Again and again on this trip, we are blessed to see God's work in the world in up-close-and-personal ways.


And a post wouldn't be complete without a few cute pics of the reason we're here- ZEKE! He's really coming out of his shell, and we feel like we're already bonding. On Sunday, Sammy took him from Dave to hold him and Zeke looked back at Dave and started crying! Sammy said, "Wow! He already knows who his daddy is!" And today at the doctor's office, quite a few people commented on how well bonded we seem to be already. We are so encouraged. Thank you, Jesus, for our son!

Nairobi

Ok, we're back! Sorry about the 5 day lapse. We moved from our friends' house to a guest house the last two nights in Kigali, where the internet was not fast enough to post anything. Then we came to Nairobi. It took us a while to get settled and to an internet cafe here where we can post. But here we are! So we'll start with some pictures and update along the way.

Here we are with the MIGEPROF. She is the one who allows people like us to adopt Rwandan kids. She is a cabinet member, the Minister of Gender and Family Promotion. Her position in the Rwandan goverment is similar to Obama's cabinet members, like Hilary Clinton and Secretary of Defense, etc. This was taken last Wednesday, the day I posted about screeching to the passport office with the letter she signed saying we were free to travel with Zeke. She was very kind and very affectionate with Zeke.


Here we are visiting our driver Bebe's house. All week his wife kept calling and asking him, "When are you going to bring the muzungu's (foreigners) home for a visit?" Finally we made it on Friday night. It was such a neat chance to interact with real Rwandans! Bebe was hilarious all week. He seems to know nearly everyone in town (Kigali is a pretty small city) and was always making us laugh somehow. His son (age 4) he named Tony Brascoe. "I was watching on CNN...," he said. :)

This was our last meeting with Agnes our lawyer. She is in the Senate and is very busy with her responsibilities there, so we didn't actually see her much during the week. But the times when she showed up, the waters parted! People know and respect her. I think our connection with her was a big factor in things going extraordinarily quickly. She also introduced us to Norbert, another lawyer who would help us when she was busy. Here he is:

He is a believer and is a genocide orphan. God's rescue of him is a pretty incredible story. I cried and cried as he told us the story. It's one thing to read stories in books. It's another thing to have a brother in Christ, whom we've come to love, look us in the eye and tell us the story. He took us home to his house for lunch on Tuesday, after he represented us in our court hearing for the adoption (hence the black robe). By the way, did I mention the court experience? It was in a cinder block, dirt floor room. The Judge sat in front with a secretary. We sat in the last of 5 rows of wooden benches. The first 4 rows were filled with prisoners wearing pink jumpsuits. We've been told that pink is the color for those who are serving life sentences and they are usually genocide perpetrators. There were also soldiers with machine guns in the room. But the proceedings were very formal, despite the surroundings.

The last morning (Saturday) in Kigali, we had Bebe take us to the Genocide Memorial. It was an amazing day to be there because this week is the Genocide Memorial Week. So there were busloads of Rwandans from out in the provinces coming to the memorial to bury more victims that have been found this past year. They are still finding bodies and mass graves around the country. Whenever a body is found and identified, the family will bring it to the Kigali Memorial to be buried with dignity. There was a burial service happening while we were there. We cried there as well, both of us, as we walked through the exhibits. What a horrible thing these people have lived through.

That afternoon, we boarded our plane for Nairobi. Zeke's first flight! I again got teary as I helped Zeke wave goodbye to Kigali, his birthplace.

We have an internet friend here in Nairobi, Celestine, who arranged for a friend of hers to pick us up at the airport. Philip was to take us to the guest house where we are staying. We got the the Catholic Savelberg Guest House at 8:45pm on Saturday night and all the nuns had gone to a special mass since it was easter weekend. We waited in the parking lot for about an hour and a half, but they didn't come, so finally Philip took us to Celestine and Sammy's house and they graciously put us up for the night. We went to church with them on Easter Sunday. It's been such a blessing to worship with believers from different countries for two weekends in a row and especially on Easter. We sang many of the same songs and hymns we would have sung if we'd been home in america. I cried, of course.
Here I am with Zeke on my lap in their living room with their girls, Baraka and Mumo. They also have Jabali, who is 7 months old, just a month older than Zeke. They had fun goo-gooing at each other during church.


Here we are shaking hands with everyone in the whole church at the end of the service. They have all the visitors line up so the church members can welcome them.

And here we are in Celestine and Sammy's dining room having Easter dinner. Celestine is on the left front and Sammy is back right. Sammy's brother and sister-in-law were also with us.

Today we went to an Elephant reserve, where they raise orphaned elephants. We got to pet them! And then to a giraffe preserve where we petted the giraffes!
Tomorrow we start the work. We have a dr appt for Zeke at 7:30am to get his tests done required for the Visa appt. While I take Zeke there, Dave will go to the Embassy to get our process started with them. There is a new law, called the Adam Walsch law, which requires another background check to be done on Dave and I in order to get Zeke's visa. We have heard this can take up to 2 weeks. We are scheduled to leave Friday night. So again, we need God to work miracles if it is his plan for us to be on that plane. Please pray for Him to work it all out for his glory and for us to trust in Him.
Thanks again for tracking with us. We'll try to update regularly now that we found this cafe.