He's Home

I forgot to blog it but Gus came home…actually he’s been home for 6 weeks now. Things got a little hectic and Gus just immediately became part of the family. We were thinking about the whole process just the other day. There were all those months of praying and crying and working to get him home. Now he sleeps in his crib and eats at our table. In the end we have a new baby in the house.

I’ll mention the trip home. Traveling 28 hours with a baby and then arriving jetlagged was probably the thing I dreaded most about the whole process. We had to wait until 11 PM in Ethiopia to even board our plane to Frankfurt. I had prayed a lot for patience. I’d say it went better than expected. He slept almost the whole way to Germany. In Frankfurt we had about 4 hours during which we drank coffee and ate sausage (seems like what one does in Germany). The flight from Frankfurt to Washington D.C. just seemed long. He did as well as can be expected. We had a very nice couple in front of us who were traveling home from their court trip. They didn’t mind the extra screaming. Gus screamed too.

When we arrived at Dulles Gus became a US citizen upon arrival. He seemed happy to be able to crawl around in the airport. (Yeah, he crawls. We were surprised too. On our first afternoon together in the guest house we set down our little baby who could hardly sit and he took off crawling like a pro.) After another 2 hours at Dulles we left for Savannah. The weather was terrible and I seriously thought for a few minutes that we had come all this way only to die a flaming death somewhere near Statesboro, GA. But we made it to the ground. Gus, feeling like it was 3 in the morning slept through the whole thing. The Lord got us through it all.

We woke him up and introduced him to friends and family. That arrival was amazing. I don’t think I’ve ever felt such a sense of accomplishment. It was great to finally introduce him to Lucy and Harry. They had prayed for him for so long! I’ll try to post some more thoughts on the process. I’d totally do it again but we definitely need some time to not be in the adoption process.