Lost in translation

Melissa and the kids came by the office today as people have been clamoring to meet Gabriel. Afterwards, they went to State Farm Park to hang out at the pool with some friends. It was Gabriel's first experience at the pool and he was very excited and very loud. We have found that God has already blessed him with a voice that carries long distances.

Compounding this is the fact that in Amharic, the word for going pee is "shinte" which is pronounced "shint". You can probably see where I am going...when Gabriel had to go today, he would call out to Melissa "shinte, shinte". To say that there were a few raised eyebrows would be an understatement!

He played so hard today he crashed on the way home...


Gabriel and Sarah Beth are getting along well...

Homecoming

With five kids we are beginning to realize that not only is our life not our own, neither is our time! We will be posting thoughts and pictures from Ethiopia, we promise. Here are a few photos that our friends, the Semlows (recent parents to a set of three siblings from Ethiopia themselves!), took at our neighborhood park when we got home...

Home!

We are home and getting acclimated to the new normal of 5 kids. We will be posting photos in the coming days while we begin to fill in the gaps during our time in Ethiopia.

Eyob and Sarah Beth are doing very well together (in fact, better than we thought they would).

Delayed an hour

For those meeting at our neighborhood park today we have been delayed one hour in DC so we will get there between 6 and 7 now.

The journey home begins!

Just a very quick note, because the van is waiting...We are on our way home!

Embassy appointment

Yesterday we had our Embassy appointment and so now the only thing that remains is to get Eyob's travel visa.

Quick update: Praise – the ticket issue has been resolved.

For anyone coming after us, we cannot recommend Ethiopia Guest House strongly enough. We have especially enjoyed the community meals. We have met so many families that have such amazing stories of how they have ended up in Ethiopia adopting a child or children. It has been such an encouragement to us. When one family is struggling with an issue other families come alongside and share words of encouragement or some advice from personal experience to help.

Eyob continues to do well with the transition with us. He is enjoying his brozzers and seester very much. We have found that when we go out anywhere he gets very quiet (which is very much out of character for him) and so we will be glad to get home to begin some sense of normalcy. Have to get ready for the day, more later...

A new approach

We realized today at the Hilton that we have no problem accessing our email account remotely, so we are going to attempt to use email to post directly to the blog.

After I completed the last blog, Melissa asked me all sorts of questions about what I commented on in our successful blog and I realized that in the vein of "men are from Mars..." that I failed to comment on the really important stuff, instead focusing on the administrative stuff. So here is my attempt to comment on the important stuff: Our incountry cell phone number is 011-251-091-0103887 (we have already added the US exit code and Ethiopia country code).

Eyob is doing remarkably well in the transition to life as a Miller. He has a very winsome personality and enjoys entertaining us and others. He knows more English than we were expecting and is able to repeat what we say very well. In addition to "welcome", we love the way he says brother (sounds like "brozzer") and sister (sounds like "seester"). He is sleeping well at night, and typically wakes once in the middle of the night for a drink of water. Although I am sure it hurt Tesfanish's heart, I think she did a remarkable job of preparing him for the transition. She is truly a wonderful woman and one we want to make certain Eyob remembers as he grows up. We can build on the strong foundation that she built.

We have really enjoyed Ethiopia Guest House and would strongly recommend it to anyone coming to Addis Ababa to adopt or do mission work. We have really enjoyed getting to know the families that are here as well. It is neat to see such a diverse group of families from places like Chicago, Austin, Dallas, Denver, and Santa Barbara, with a similar call to adopt from Ethiopia. It has been really great to hear everyone's story of how they got to this point and it has been such an encouragement to us.

Praises:
- The flight went very well and we managed the time better on this flight. Sleep was less of a problem.
- All of the luggage was allowed without any fees.
- Abby's luggage that was lost was found with everything intact.

Prayer requests:
- Eyob's ticket issue is still unresolved and we ask for your continued prayer. The problem has been escalated to the person within Ethiopian Air who can choose to resolve it so we travel as planned or choose not to, pushing us to a later flight (not a desired outcome).

Believing that the ticket issue will be resolved well, we are planning to land at O'Hare about around 1:20 pm on Friday, July 31st. From there we plan to drive to Bloomington and go to our neighborhood park between 5 and 6 pm to see any of you who can make it.

More to follow...from Ethiopia we hope (if this works as anticipated, I will try to push some photos through to the blog as well).