A Very Different Kind of "Back to School" Post

My heart is overflowing with joy.  As I sit here the past two days on Facebook reading everyone's complaints and woes, I am struck at our country's lack of perspective and gratitude.  How spoiled and self-righteous are we as a nation when we complain about our "first world problems" whilst people around the world fight for their right to simply live.

On Wednesday we, as a family, watched a documentary on Netflix called "On the Way to School".  It follows the lives of four different children in four different countries and documents their journey to school every day.  None of the kids in the film walked less than an hour each way to school daily.  One child had to watch out for elephant stampedes, while another pushed their brother, who was in a wheelchair, through very rugged terrain for over an hour.  Yet we complain.  After the film I was struck when the first words out of Charlotte's mouth was "When are we sending the money to send my sisters to school?".  Little did she know that I had been working on this very task over the past few days with our friend Workineh in Ethiopia.

I want to preface this post with the fact that Mike and I are no saints.  This story is of God and only possible through God.  We are simply following God's call on our lives.  He is the one making all of this possible, so please join us in praising Him and not us.

As many of you already know we hired an investigator back in May and were able to locate both birth mothers of our girls.  You can read ore about that story here.  We knew the twins had two sisters, one is now 7 and the other is 12.  In the interest of their privacy I will refer to them as K and N.  Once we found them I had a strong desire to make sure these girls were in a good school.  Since May I have been working with Workineh (our investigator turned friend) as well as our Ethiopian friend here in the states to determine what the best way to go about this would be.  Mike and I wanted to make sure we weren't trying to swoop in and be all "white savior" about the way we wanted to help.

This summer, while visiting family in Ohio, we were able to call the twins' birthmother, Abinet, ON THE PHONE!!!!  Our friend, and Godsend, Amsale in Ohio had her phone number from when the investigator told us that Abinet did have a phone.  Amsale happened to be in Ethiopia visiting her family in May when Workineh found Abinet, so she was able to talk with her on the phone 2 times while she was there.  We were sitting up in a bedroom in Amsale's house.  Our main goal of the phone call was to let Abinet know how we would like to help and find out what kind of school she would like the girls to go to. 

An interesting side note is the twins' response to our phone call to Abinet.  One girl wanted to stand in the room to just listen, but did not want to say anything.  The other wanted nothing to do with the call.  I mention this to emphasize that these are BIG and COMPLICATED feelings that they are sorting through.  They each sleep with a scarf tied around their waist that Amsale brought back for them from Ethiopia that she told them was from Abinet.  They love their first mother, but yet, there's so many feelings!  Mike and I are very intentional about letting them lead as far as how much, and what, involvement they want in this whole process. 

In Ethiopia a boarding school is the most prestigious school.  In my gut, I didn't think she would want to send them to a boarding school.  She already had to part with two of her kids due to terrible circumstances and I felt that she wouldn't want the other two out of her house.  I was correct.  She was so moved by our offer and asked why we wanted to help her.  All of us were crying.  We told her, through Amsale's translation, that she is now a part of our family and we help our family.  We conveyed to her how much we loved her and her other daughters and how we wish to come to visit her in three years.  At one point in the phone call she said "God made these girls (the twins) for you."  My response was "No, he made them for you, but we are so blessed to help."

She chose the school she wanted and let Workineh know how much tuition, the entrance fee, uniforms and school supplies would be.  The total for BOTH girls was...$310 for the entire year.  We are blessed with an incredible group of friends and family who all waned to participate in helping our new family members, which allowed us to send some extra money for school clothes, shoes, etc.

I sent the money to Workineh through Western Union on Wednesday and he traveled to their town on Thursday.  He sent me some pictures.  God is so good guys!

 Here are K & N modeling their new school clothes, shoes and backpacks.

 These are some of their new school books.

 This is the fabric that has been taken to a tailor to be made into their school uniforms.  School starts on September 18th.

 N, Abninet and K showing the photo album I made back in May for them of pictures of the twins from the entire time they've been with us.  Workineh delivered it to them on this trip.  

Here are the girls standing outside the school compound.

I need to express to you that through this entire process we have been very transparent and open with the twins.  They know everything, every detail we discovered about their birthfamily.  Some of it wasn't ideal, obviously.  This has brought the twins so much healing and helped them bond with us on a whole other level.  Their trust in us has grown exponentially.  They see our love for them shown through our love for their first family.  It helps that they no longer need to worry about what ever happened to their first family, especially their sisters.  We will always keep in touch and make sure they're ok, as much as is possible.

In no way has this discovery made me feel any "less" their mother.  I have not felt threatened in any way.  I feel closer to them knowing their history.  It has made me love their first family like they're my own.  It has opened my eyes and broken my heart for what breaks God's.  It has brought me closer to God.  He has been in every small detail of this whole experience.  I pray for Abinet everyday.  I wear a bracelet that says "enat" {mother in Amharic} to remind me to pray for her.  

I sleep better at night knowing I am doing all I can to help them.  It has brought our whole family here, and friends, together for such an amazing reason.  Our family has made us feel so loved, and again it shows the twins that they can trust all of us.  I sleep better knowing that this woman halfway around the world knows she's not forgotten.  She knows her babies are loved and cherished.  She knows that God has heard her prayers and is using us to help answer some of them.  That is an incredible honor.

Blessed By Birthmothers Across the Globe

Last week we hired an investigator halfway around the world in Ethiopia and this week we have pictures and information about all of our daughters' birth mothers.  MIND BLOWN.

It has literally been a million times easier to find these women in rural Ethiopia, living in mud huts, than it has to get my license plates switched over from Ohio to Pennsylvania, which still has not happened and we've lived here nearly a year.

Mike and I have been saying for the past 4 years that as soon as we got our 2011 tax refund, which includes our adoption tax credit, that we would hire an investigator to look into the twins' birth family.  Because this tax refund took a whopping FOUR YEARS to get straightened out, this has seemed like an elusive goal, something out of our reach.  Thanks to my superhero tax attorney Uncle Mike we were able to finally get the refund and not 2 weeks later I saw a question on an Ethiopian Adoption Support Group page I follow on Facebook.  There was a woman asking for a recommendation for an investigator and it just so happened that my friend Scott commented.  I sent Scott a message to ask more about this man he was recommending and his response was that this man was like a part of his family, a Christian and one of Scott's best friends.  SOLD.

I reached out to this man on Facebook, who lives in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  I gave him all of the information I have from the paperwork from their adoptions.  I've had a few friends go through this process and find out that most, if not all, of the information that was in their adoption paperwork was a lie, so there was no guaranteeing this information I was giving him was factual.  I figured we'd wait a couple of months to find anything out.

Imagine my surprise when only a couple of days later he was in the village that the twins were born in.  He had information.  Mike and I held our breaths when opening the email and reading his report.  

We hardly knew anything about the twins' story, beside what they could remember and verbalize to us in their broken English when they were four.  They talked about a mom figure, but called her by her first name.  This mom was on the paperwork once as their mother and yet on another set of paperwork she was listed as a guardian.  We weren't certain if she was the mom or an eldest sister.  They also spoke of an older sister and a baby sister.  Charlotte named all of her baby dolls after this baby sister and missed her dearly in that first year with us.  Even after being with us for nearly 3 years I remember a night where she broke down and wept because she was worried about her baby sister in Ethiopia.  My heart broke not being able to give her those answers she was craving.

Now we had the information in our lap and we prayed that it was good news that would be healing.  We opened the report and read it together before sharing it with the girls.  It turns out it was their mother and she is well, living with the other two daughters.  While the paperwork said that their father died, it turns out he just up and left once the baby sister was born, leaving their mother with no way to support her family.  She was in an impossible situation.  She relinquished custody of the twins when they were 3 (6 years ago) and had not heard a word about their whereabouts since.  She was so happy to see the pictures of the girls that we sent with our investigator.  She wept over them for a long time, he told us, and she had a hard time speaking.  I cannot even imagine not knowing where your children were and if they were ok for SIX YEARS.  The girls' sisters are also well, looking to be about 13 and 6 years old.  The younger one looks like a crazy awesome combination of the twins. 

When we showed the twins the pictures and shared the information they were beaming from ear to ear!  They loved seeing someone who actually looked like them!  They no longer have any conscious memories of their life back then, but I could see how healing it was going to be for them to have this treasure of information.  Seeing their first mother crying tears of joy when looking at their pictures.  She LOVES them, she MISSES them, they were wanted.  She made a selfless and impossible decision to give the girls a chance at a better life.  

A couple of days later we got word that our investigator was in Celia's family's village as he sent us pictures and a report.  Her birth mother is very young and very poor living in a home made of branches and sticks.  Once again the story of Celia's birth father being deceased proved to be untrue.  He also disappeared once Celia was born.  Her birth mother was so poor she was unable to feed herself enough to be able to produce milk to feed her baby.  Celia was very malnourished when she came to the orphanage.  She is now remarried and just recently had another baby, a boy.

Celia is only 5 right now so this information is a bit much for her to be able to process.  We told her about her baby brother in Ethiopia and her response was "I know, I remember him."  Umm yeah chica you left the country before you were one year old and he was just born, so no, you don't remember him, but whatever!  I feel good that as she gets older and does have questions that I will have some of the answers she is seeking.

As I look at the pictures of these beautiful women on the other side of the world I realize how incredible it is to be able to love someone this much without ever even meeting them.  I love these women.  I feel like our family has grown.  I never thought that we would have the opportunity to have any form of an open adoption when we adopted children from another country, but God has now opened that door.  Through our investigator I can now send letters, more pictures and other items he thinks might be helpful for them.  Mike and I are also looking into what it would take to pay for the twins' sisters to attend a good school.  We are praying about what we do next now that we have all of this information.  We feel a responsibility to help our new family members in any way we can.  While I set out to do this for the girls, I have realized it was just as much for me.  I needed to know that these mothers knew that their babies were well, loved and had a family that would never let them forget where they came from.  I feel lighter somehow.

We do plan on making a trip over there once the girls are older and when we go we will most definitely spend time with their first mothers.  I can't wait to hold them, cry with them, laugh with them, pray with them, cook with them and thank them for the gift they gave us and our girls.  These girls are going to do BIG things, and that began with their mothers making a very brave and scary choice of giving their children life.

God's timing is pretty amazing.  All of this happened just in time for mother's day.  Best gift ever.