Emergency Urgency! Part 1

Where to even begin....

So last you heard we were celebrating Harris' birthday with Ethiopian food.  That was June.

July came and went with our usual 4th of July gatherings, fireworks and the traditional and most beloved part of the holiday, homemade ice cream.  I also loaded up the kids with my sister-n-law and her kids and drove to the beach--what an adventure!

Then August came.  I turned 31!  Happy birthday to me!  I was wondering what this new year of life would hold, where it would take me and my family.  It started off with Asher starting school.  What a bittersweet day!  When he got off the bus that first day I was secretly hoping he hated school and missed me all day long.  Quite the contrary.  He went on and on with a big smile on his face telling me all the details and couldn't wait to go back the next day.  I guess it's good that he likes school.  ;)  The next day I tried to go on with life as normal (sniff) and enjoy my one-on-one time with Mary Clair.  So we met my brother and parents for lunch.  During our delicious Thai lunch I had a missed call from our agency and a couple texts from Jake indicating I needed to call our agency A.S.A.P!  I was hoping it was good news--maybe we got our court date and were going to be leaving the next week!  I was going to wait until I got home to make any phone calls.  Then Jake called.  "I'm at home.  Where are you?  I tell you what's going on when you get here."  My stomach dropped.  Had Jake lost his job?  Was something wrong with Harris?  Something was not right.  Usually the drive from downtown Athens to home is not that bad, but this was a terribly long ride with my mind going 100 miles a minute with all sorts of bad thoughts of what could have gone wrong.  I came in as quickly as possible and got Mary Clair to bed.
"Harris is sick and in the hospital," Jake said.  Apparently there was a cholera outbreak in his orphanage and 4 kids were in the hospital, Harris being one of them.  Jake had been upset and was crying.  I was too mad to cry.  He should have already been home, I thought.  This would have never happened if he had already been home!  It's been almost a year.  He should be here....
I've never felt so helpless.
What were we going to do?
Jake had already been doing some research on cholera and it sounded really serious, so we emailed all our questions to our agency.  As you've heard me say before, we have to best agency ever!  Lifeline Adoptions has been walking with us now over these past 4 1/2 years and I can't imagine having gone through all this with any other agency.  Now that we are at the end of our process we have also been working with another adoption agency who is partners with Lifeline--West Sands Adoptions.  They also have been very helpful and kind.
We exchanged some emails and phone calls to our case worker over the next couple days trying desperately to get some details on anything!  We would get responses saying the hospital was shut down because of the outbreak, the phone of the nanny who is with Yibekal (Harris) was dead because she had no charger in the hospital, all children from our agency had been pulled out to the home of a man who worked with the agency to insure the health of the children....then they said they would let us break the rules and come if we felt we needed to go see Harris.  Unfortunately, the courts had just closed for holiday so there would be no expediting our court date because of health issues.
So we prayed.
And the next day we bought plane tickets.
Then the day after that, we were on a plane to Ethiopia.

Ok.
Time out.
Rewind.

Monday-Katherine's 31st birthday (dreaming about what the year would hold)
Wednesday-Asher starts kindergarten (tears and overly sentimental Katherine)
Thursday-Crazy scary phone calls about our son, Harris, in the hospital with cholera (potentially deadly)
Friday-The courts in Ethiopia close.  But our agency says we can go to Ethiopia....
Saturday-Plane tickets purchased.
Sunday-Got on a plane and headed to Ethiopia.

"Wait a second," you may say, "how on earth did you pull that off??"
Well, we had lots and lots of people praying--in fact, on a 24 hour basis!  We had friends making packing lists, ordering medications, ordering plane tickets, feeding my family and even unloading my dishwasher (if you want to bless me, unload my dishwasher!!)  We had other friends giving us money to cover the cost of the trip!  Did I mention we had people praying??!  Our parents jumped right in to buying us another suit case, dropping everything and being willing to do child care for the week last minute, and driving us to the airport.  Did I mention my sister was in town from New Orleans and helped my parents with the kids (even with those middle of the night bad dreams and having a child sleeping in the same bed!  Sorry for those grey hairs you found the next week....I will take full responsibility!)?

So there we were, on our way to Ethiopia, not sure what the trip was going to even look like.  Would we arrive to even worse news than before?  Would we arrive and not even get to see Harris?  All we could do was sleep on the plane and trust that God was going to take care of all the details.

*Stay tuned for Part II*