From Zambia

Hello, family and friends!

We are settling in in our apartment. It’s really big and nice (I use the term loosely, of course). But we have a lot of room, 1 and 1/2 bathrooms, big kitchen, and really big living space. The Jeantets came over for dinner last night so that we could all fit around the table together and talk in the family room. Their apartment is on the small side.

Zambia is wonderful! I don’t feel homesick at all here! I ALWAYS feel homesick when I spend the night away from home and I don’t here, so that’s so nice. The windows are open, the kids have a playground right in front of our apartment with a big grassy area to play in, so they can go in and out and play all day. I can see and hear everything through the open windows. There’s an American missionary family staying here for a few days, with kids close to our kids’ ages, so Kate and Will have had the best time playing with them on the playground. Of course, Jeremiah (the Jeantets’ 2 year old little boy) is very popular with them, too! The missionaries leave tomorrow, which is sad, but the playground will still be here.

We went grocery shopping yesterday. In the afternoon, we visited House of Moses, the orphanage we’re adopting from. The lady we met with said that she couldn’t help us with our adoptions till she met with the social worker from the government and that wouldn’t be till Tues, which was not the way we had been told the process would go. But we stayed for 2 hours and held the 16 infants there and fed them bottles, etc., and loved every minute of it! I was in heaven with all the babies! They were all under 6 months old and were so adorable. I wanted all of them, except the one who threw up everywhere!

So back to the adoption info.... We visited the orphanage again today and the older children’s orphanage down the road from House of Moses. We loved them all, but there were a few we thought might be “the one”. So at this point, we’re going to keep visiting and playing with the orphans, meet the social worker on Tues., and hope that they’ll tell us they have a little girl ready to be adopted.

We’ll update as we have news. Kate, Will, and Hudson were so good at the orphanages today. They played so well with all the kids. I was a little worried about Hudson because of his age, etc., but he loved them all and was so sweet to the little ones. I’m so proud of how all 3 of them are doing and how much they’re loving stranger kids and on top of that, strangers who don’t look like us. Today was really great.

We love you all and hope to have some good news soon!!