Micah is home!

Today we meet Micah Awate at the airport!

The kiddos had a ton of fun running around waiting for Aimee, Dan and Micah. Then we caught sight and the rest is a blur of screaming and picture taking (and maybe some ugly crying from me, which my mom unfortunately has documented). Micah is such a sweet, amazingly beautiful boy.

It's so great to finally have the family complete. This adoption has taken almost 2 years. Michael and I were talking tonight about how great it feels to have the whole Neal family together. I just feels right!

"Can I call him Daddy?"

Caleb, Nathan, and I had an awesome conversation today about adoption. We bounced around from lots of different topics...My sister is in Ethiopia right now picking up her new son, Micah, and we're all so excited. I was teaching the boys some of the important adoption lingo that every 5 and 3 year old should know, like: birth mother, birth father, biological children, etc.


Caleb started thinking and asked "why can't Micah's birth father take care of him?" This is one of those conversations when I think 'should I really be saying these things to my 5 year old?', but I quickly decide yes and keep talking. This time about malaria and how sad it is that Micah's birth father passed away before he was born.


Winding down the heavy conversation I say 'do you have any other questions?' He asks what is adoption- I decide I can brighten this conversation up with telling him that God created adoption and that He adopted us into His family and how awesome that is, that God is now our Father. He said "Can I call him Daddy?" and I melted.


Nathan quickly got bored of our conversation, he just wants our baby to be here now. He loves babies!


Here's their new list of names: Elliana (a friend of ours little baby), Ameena (an Ethiopian name I found online, and Drumroll....Caleb's own ---Contenie. Yup he made that one up all by himself.

He just made me read this to him and noticed that Dora wasn't on the list. Dang, I thought he forgot. He also added another original, Elonie.

Sweet Baby

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing

T-Shirts

Our shirts are in! My brother in law, Dan, did an awesome job designing these shirts for us (he and my sister are travelling right now to get my nephew in Ethiopia). As you can see, the shirt has Africa is filled in with all sorts of words relating to our adoption. Love, family, adoption, patience, hope, 7,346 (miles from Dearborn to Ethiopia), AGCI (our agency), Hannah's Hope (our agency's orphanage), a couple key Bible verses for us, Home (the e in home is pink and is where Ethiopia is in Africa), fir-kir (means love in Amheric).......

Also, we have 50 Jerry Schroeder (another artsy b-i-l) cd's to give away. He's giving the proceeds to Father's House International in Ghana. So we'd like to pass a cd on to you with your shirt:)

We are doing this because it's super expensive to adopt, yet we totally feel called to do it. The Lord has showed us how close adoption is to His heart, we have all been adopted into His family. We feel blessed to have our faith stretched in this process. Last year when we started, we had a little bit of money saved up for it, but as the process continued we were surprised at how quickly we needed to come up with lots of money. I was super stressed about it for a couple weeks, but as the months went on we were amazed at the Lord's provision. He provided extra jobs for both Michael and I. Seriously, it's amazing, we've already paid $11,000. We usually, like most people, have just enough money to pay our bills so this is really incredible for us. He has used this process to build our faith.

Generally, I hate having fundraisers, I hate asking people for money and I feel ackward receiving money from people, so this is a real stretch for me. I'm amazed at people's generosity though and I hate to have my pride stiffle that. So I'm swallowing it here and letting you know that if you'd like to contribute you can by buying a shirt. But if you can't or don't, we still love you and we'd love your prayers more than your moolah:) I've also added a donate button on the sidebar because some super generous peeps asked me to--thanks guys!

If you're interested in buying one you can buy through paypal or if you live close, let us know and we'll deliver:)