weekend update

This post will not be as entertaining as the SNL sketch bearing the same title, but we wanted to let you know what's been happening since our big news on Thursday.

We mentioned that the director of our adoption agency (Patty) lost her beautiful daughter Thursday afternoon. Here's a link to a story about Patty's family. If you scroll about halfway down, you can read about Ari, her 14 year old daugther who just died. It sounds like she was an absolutely amazing girl. On top of this tragedy, baby Diamond's heart gave out in Liberia just a few hours later. The Acres of Hope office assistant (Donna) and her husband had recently decided to adopt Diamond. Because his situation was improving during the day Thursday, they stayed up late that evening and discussed his future. They even chose his new name, only to learn an hour after they fell asleep that he had died. Patty had to get up on Friday, bury Diamond, and get on a plane to return home and bury her little girl. Please pray for Patty, Donna, and their families as they mourn the passing of these special children.

Our friend John is with us from Liberia. He arrived on Thursday, will be leaving tomorrow, and might be back later in the week. On March 1st, he'll be returning to Liberia to get ready for us to visit him sometime that month! He gave us this very cool Liberian wallhanging as a gift, and we hung it in the hallway between Peter's study and the bathroom. (We figured that if we didn't find it a home right away, it would end up with all the other wallhangings that have been sitting around on the floor for over a year and a half!)
We've learned a few general things about our kids' tribe and region from John. First, we learned that the Krahn are notoriously stubborn people. That's wonderful news for us. We also learned that they're great hunters, and their county is the place to go for good meat. They even hunt elephants and other wild game in Grand Gedeh county; however, we're guessing that our kids are probably from the smaller group of Krahn people that have moved to the capital of Monrovia, so they may never have seen elephants.

We just mailed gifts for Joshua and Patience to a family that will be travelling to Liberia to get their kids next weekend. We couldn't send anything big or heavy, so we just got them each a pack of stickers. We wrapped them in pretty paper and wrote a card. It's exciting to realize that this may be the first wrapped gift our kids have ever received! We hope they will be excited to get a gift and a reminder that Daddy and Mommy are coming for them SOON! We didn't send a gift for Garty since he would only eat the stickers, and he doesn't know we exist.

Other than that, Peter worked on some house projects this weekend while Becky scrapbooked with friends for 8 hours on Saturday and went to a baby shower for Peter's cousin Kris and her soon-to-be-born twins today. (We had to throw that in now that we know that Kris is bored to death on bedrest and depends on this blog for her daily entertainment. So if you think you're bored, say a prayer for poor Kris!)