He's From Ethiopia

Lunch with our friends from the movie theater
was a success.

We met our new friends at a

local authentic Ethiopian restaurant.

It was authentic.  No silverware.

The kids got along instantly.

Isaac and Emma Grace taught Lilly that the
"pancakes" were actually "injera". 

Daisy was a good sport.  She tried "injera" and "kik alicha".

The waitress insisted that this was "perfect for babies".  When Daisy tried it,

the waitress declared that Daisy was "very smart".

Then Daisy finished her Uncrustable.

Jesus was there.

At our table, and on the walls.

The kids made good use of the stage

and the ceremonial play area coffee area.

The guys were able to finish off most of the platters. 

And by "guys", I mean Issac.

Isaac paid the tab for his family.

It was a very cute moment.

Here's to new friends and family.

Enkutatash...

Happy Ethiopian New Years 2011!

(There aren't enough ways

to say "Thank You."

My cup overflows.....)

Updates and Such

Hey everybody,



Well, it's been a long time since we've chatted about our adoption, so I thought I'd keep you up to date. We've finally gotten through our home study (yay). And now it's time for the super serious part. During all these months that I've run Give1 I've had tons of time to learn about African adoption and culture and that's been so cool. I've definitely learned that when you adopt a child, you also adopt a culture, and that's what brought us to a bit of a pause. We always had planned on adopting a child from Ethiopia, and then when that was complete to adopt from Haiti. I've come to realize that there couldn't really be two more opposite cultures! The Haitian culture and adoption process is more in sync with our family. The reason we planned on adopting from Haiti later is because they have a policy that you must be 35 to adopt and we are not. There's some buzz in the air about that law being changed to 30, so we took a huge leap of faith and had our home study prepared for a Haitian adoption instead. Ok, and then the law did not change. And that's where we are now. With a prepared home study, bank account, and hearts... and we don't yet qualify. SO... I would love some prayers. For the Haitian law to change, which would allow so many more people to pursue Haitian adoption and find homes for those little ones. For our patience in the process. God is absolutely doing something here and I'm learning that I'm just not in control of it. I have no idea what's going to happen and peace constantly a little outside of my grasp.

{photos of Haiti by Baron Batch's creative nonprofit, 2nd Hand Images}

So that's our personal story. Now for some other Haitian news. Next week Give1: Haiti will open up. That was always part of the plan. Like I said, our adoption (whenever that may be)  is pretty well funded (thank you for all who have helped). I've been making custom artwork that still goes into the adoption fund for travel expenses and such, so if you'd like to keep supporting us, that's totally the way to do it. But we won't have that paypal button anymore. Right now we're looking for families adopting from Haiti. And since we don't have one yet I'll be blogging on behalf of our friend, Jen Hatmaker's HELP safe house project. I hope you'll join me next week in learning more about Haiti and it's adoption process. It's a beautiful culture, and I have so loved learning French and using more coconut, lime, and rum in my cooking adventures! :)

New Week, New Family

Hey Guys,

I'd like to introduce you to Debbie and Kevin. And I'd like to bring back something that we haven't done in a while, and let them tell their story because they can tell it far more beautifully than I can.



Kevin and I have always discussed adoption as something that we would desire to do sometime in our future. Kevin and I have had the strongest desire to be parents for over 2 years now.  This desire has caused us to pray much about what God's plan is for our family. We have always had such a deep desire to raise children to glorify and love the Lord.  There have been some medical issues that have thus far prevented us from having biological children. We have certainly felt at a loss for what to do many times over the past couple years. In November 2010, Kevin and I discussed what our next step in life should be. Adoption kept coming up in our conversations. We teach our youth group students 3 questions to ask themselves when they are facing a decision.  Those questions are, “Does this glorify God?, Does this make me look more like Jesus? And Does this help others see God’s truth?” We took our own advice and applied those same questions to our situation.  No matter how we examined adoption we kept seeing that it continually lined up with God’s truth in scripture. 

 As Christians, we all have our own adoption story. It is a beautiful story of how our loving God adopted us as his children. We are all adopted by Christ Jesus. We were orphans destined for death but Jesus chose us to be his children and he placed us in His family. Ephesians 1:5 says, “He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will.” Oh, the beauty of the Gospel. Praise the Lord for the kind intention of his will! We greatly desire to adopt a child into our home and life just as Christ has done for us.  There are 143 million orphans in the world. Children who are designed and created in the image of God are left homeless and helpless. Kevin and I desire to make that number One Less! One less hurting. One less hungry.One less fatherless. One less unloved.  God will make us a family forever by grace!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PUG_wD43zc]

If you'd like to donate to the Weldons adoption, just click here. And then spread the word in any way you can because the only way we all get off the hook with giving a dollar is if alot of other people do it too! :)

Docica

Hey All!



Guess what?! We were just featured in Docica magazine! Now, I was pretty thrilled when asked about being included in this month's issue (mostly because it was a magazine, and that's super cool!), but I was delighted when the issue published and I got to read it. The article about us and our little community we've got going on here was great, but I'm here to tell you about a few more gems. You see, I'd never heard of Docica. Have you? It's a 'simple living magazine about real beauty'. That's how they describe themselves and it's just perfect. You've got to check them out. We're talking fashion, home decor, recipes, and features on beautiful real women. This month is the adoption issue and there are some great articles. There's even one about the Waymans, one of our families from way back. So go check it out and bookmark it. This is one I'll be keeping an eye on!

Cooking with Kelly

Well, I hope you all have remembered that leading up to this cooking project, I warned you that cooking isn't really my thing. I wasn't just being modest.

Let's deem cooking with Kelly project #1 a big.fat.fail :)

I wanted to start off with injera, the Ethiopian flatbread type food, because it's pretty much the staple of every meal. In Ethiopia, all other foods are served on top of this and you use it as the utensil, picking up your food with a piece of the injera. Injera is made of teff which is the smallest grain in the world; it takes about 150 teff seeds to equal the weight of a kernel of wheat.

I did a fair amount of research on different injera recipes. The one I fell in love with seems so impossible. It all starts with a 15 day sourdough starter, which you then need to transition to a teff starter, which you then have to use to actually make the injera. My chest is getting tight just thinking about it.

So I thought it would be a better idea to start off easy. When I say easy, I mean EASY. It's hard for me to wrap my head around a recipe being SO difficult and one that is SO easy to make the exact same thing. But I put my blinders on and went for it.

The ingredients I used include:

1/4 cup teff flour
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup water
a pinch of salt

Here's the reciepe itself:

1. Put the teff flour in the bottom of a mixing bowl, and sift in the all-purpose flour.

2. Slowly add the water, stirring to avoid lumps.

3. Put the batter aside for a day or more (up to three days) to allow it to ferment. In this time, your injera batter will start to bubble and acquire the slight tanginess for which it’s known. Note: If you find that your injera batter does not ferment on its own, try adding a teaspoon of yeast.

4. Stir in the salt.

5. Heat a nonstick pan or lightly oiled cast-iron skillet until a water
drop dances on the surface. Make sure the surface of the pan is smooth: Otherwise, your injera might fall apart when you try to remove it.

6. Coat the pan with a thin layer of batter. Injera should be thicker than a crêpe, but not as thick as a traditional pancake. It will rise slightly when it heats.

7. Cook until holes appear on the surface of the bread. Once the surface is dry, remove the bread from the pan and let it cool.

That was easy. Even for me. So I'm going to give myself a little bit of an out, though. I only let the mixture set for a day, because I procrastinated too much was too excited to try it out so I'm not sure I let it ferment long enough because there weren't a whole lot of bubbles. Also, there was this thin liquid over the surface of the mixture and the recipe didn't tell me what to do with that...so I stirred it all in. Okay, okay, you want to see the results, don't you? See, when I went to take a picture, I couldn't get the camera to work. And I wasn't at all sad about it because I thought that meant I just wouldn't have to share a picture with you all! My handy husband got it working though, so there goes my excuse. Here it is...don't laugh...



Oh gosh, I know, it looks nothing like the real deal. P.S. here's the real deal:



Here's the thing: it doesn't really taste that bad! Nick doesn't think it tastes like injera, mostly because he feels like the spongy-ness is what makes it injera. But hey, teff is bursting with nutrients like fiber, iron and calcium, so I ate some of it anyway.

Where do I go from here? Well, I think it's safe to say there's nowhere but up! I'm going to let my mixture ferment for a few more days and try again with the same mixture to figure out if that would have made such a huge difference. By next month, I will have attempted the super difficult injera recipe and can hopefully tell you whether it's worth the extra effort.

Buckle Up!

One of our adoption loans fell through yesterday.

It was a tough day.  But there have been other tough days...

The day we told friends and family about our plan, the emotional support was overwhelming.  However, many asked,
"How do you KNOW that this is God's calling?" 
It got to me.  
I woke my oldest daughter from her nap and drove her to the dollar theater to see Pooh Bear, something I would never normally do. 

It was raining. 

Hurricane Irene was passing over our heads.

It started raining really hard on the drive over, and I just cried while I drove. 
I was really, really scared. 
What if we were wrong? 

What if we were outside of "The Plan"? 

I begged God for a sign, or at least some comfort.

Soaked from the rain and still wiping tears from my eyes, I purchased tickets at the booth.  I turned to find my daughter staring face to face with a little boy. 
She whispered just loud enough for me to hear, "Mommy, is this my brother?"
I quickly apologized to the little boy's Mommy, explaining the adoption. 
She said It's okay... 
He's from Ethiopia. 
I was speechless.  I went to the popcorn stand and the woman fell in line behind me again.  We exchanged numbers, and she invited us to join her family for the Ethiopian New Year's dinner at a local Ethiopian restaurant in September. 

That day is today.

His rainbows are everywhere in our lives right now. 

We already built the boat.

Regarding the loan,  I want to share with you that it will be okay.  There is a better plan.  We are approved for a high interest loan via a Christian Credit Union, but I think there is a bigger plan in the works right now.  Our completed homestudy is set to be done this week, and at that point we may apply to several no-interest loans like Abba Fund.
I wanted to share with you once again that God Funds What He Favors. 
He has already given this family everything we need to believe that.  We are eligible for a $10,000 tax credit from the federal government, and an ADDITIONAL $6,000 from the state.  He has already made the provisions.  We just have to walk blindly towards that point. 
I got a few notes asking if this was the end. 
This is NOT the end. 
This is the beginning. 
This will teach us patience. 
If this small bump knocked us off the course, we would not make it through the trials that lie ahead either.  I am praying for friends right now who have a legally adopted child waiting for them in Ethiopia, and they cannot pick them up until the courts reopen from rainy season and paperwork debaucles are sorted out.  This is nothing.

People have asked me, "Now that you guys have made this announcement, what if you decide to back out of this?  What will you do?"
My husband and I have to laugh to ourselves.  We already have children in Africa.  We have not seen their faces, but this deal is already done.  To walk away now would break our hearts in the same manner it would if we left one of our biological children in Africa and returned home without them.  We are already parents to our unknown children.  We love them and yearn for them with a nonsensical passion. 

He's GOT this!

Walking the Talk

Danae and Kyle Johnson, our family this week, made an absolutely lovely video. But I thought it would be fun to get to know them more. So I asked Danae to connect me with some of her friends. Behind her back, I asked Danae’s friends, “What makes Kyle and Danae special?” Here is what they said:

They have more enthusiasm, energy, and desire to help others in their community and beyond than anyone else I have ever met.  Kyle and Danae are determined to share their life, love, and home with a child from Ethiopia and to make a difference in that child’s life.


Recently, they organized putting together Blessing Bags for children in Africa. Not only did their efforts result in 130 blessing bags, but it brought people together for such a great cause. Oh, and this was Danae’s way of celebrating her 30^th birthday! It was amazing, just like them.





They volunteer to help people, even strangers, all the time. In the fall, Danae volunteered at an event and helped package meals that were sent to the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya.


They are dedicated and caring people. They approach everything with passion and good intentions. They'll be great parents with those characteristics.


I raise puppies that become service dogs or guide dogs. The first puppy I ever raised was graduating with his visually impaired, new owner, and it was really important for me to be there. But I had to be out of town the day of graduation. Danae and Kyle dropped all their plans, on Kyle’s birthday no less, and drove three hours away to attend the graduation in my place. They knew it was important for the dog's new owner to have someone there to support him. It meant the world to me that they were there to stand in for me. I know they had other things they could have done, but they chose to help me.


Danae and Kyle are the most giving couple I have ever met. They are continually thinking of others and what they can do to help those who suffer or are in need. They are truly kind and selfless.


A little over a year ago I received unexpected news that I needed to travel to New Mexico because my mom was sick. I didn't know how I was going to afford a last minute flight, much less the other expenses of my travel. I told Danae about my situation and within minutes she had called Kyle, they had decided that they would give me their frequent flyer miles, and had even looked up flight so that all I had to do was book the flight. It was amazing that they did this for me. They could have easily used those miles themselves, and probably ended up having to spend money later because they had given them away. The thing is, they are always doing things like this for people. They are constantly thinking of what they can do for their family, for their friends, or for strangers.

Danae has wanted to adopt a child her entire life. It's been a life-long dream. And nothing would please me more than to see this dream of hers fulfilled. They have educated themselves and done everything humanly possible to make the transition for their son as easy as possible. They have used that knowledge to educate their family and friends, so they know what to expect, too. Sometimes, the hardest things in life are also the most fulfilling.

Clearly, Danae and Kyle are walking the talk. I hope we can make a difference for them in the same way they have made a difference for so many other people, including their soon-to-be new son. Hit that red donate button and walk with them through this journey.