ONE

The day we got home from Africa, my baby turned ONE! What?!!

I took her in this week for her one year check-up and here are her stats:

Weight- 22lbs 4ozs which is in the 70%

Length- 30.5 inches which is in the 90%

We went to dinner after my family picked me up at the airport and Nanny stopped for a cake for Reese:)

She has changed SO much since I left just three weeks ago. Here are her new tricks and she wasn't doing any of them when I left: She holds her hands over her head when you ask her how big she is. Papaw taught her that one:)

She is crawling

She's into everything

She is squealing like crazy. I have started teaching her to sign since I've been back:)

She is eating three meals a day like the rest of us

She has drastically cut back on her bottles

She plays in the playroom with the big girls...precious

She dropped a nap (I haven't forgiven Jeremy for this one yet)

She is developing quite the personality! When I left she was pretty quiet and just hung out. Now she is spunky and loud...a true Gibson Girl.

She says "bye-bye" "hey"

The girls point at her and she points back with her chubby little finger. (That one is adorable)

I have no idea why all these pictures are blurry...sorry:(

"How Big is Reese?"

"Soooo Big"

She melts me with that smile
See....eating big girl food and she drank out of a straw for the first time at her birthday dinner.
We were singing to her

She did not like the icing! Strange girl:)
Actually she didn't really eat any of the cake. We'll see how she does at her birthday party next weekend.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my Reesee girl! You've brought more joy to our lives than we could have possibly imagined.

Uganda

There will be individual posts for much of the stuff in this slideshow, but I wanted to leave this with you for now:)

The song I chose played in my head over and over while we were there.

Home!

Just wanted to let you know that we are home sweet home! We got home on Wednesday night about 6:30. And we were greeted with signs, cheers, and tears by those who mean the most to us:) Our dear family and friends!

I am trying to adjust back to life here:) Planning lots of posts coming soon!

Thank you again from the bottom of my heart for all of your prayers and well wishes while we were gone. They truly sustained us. You just have no idea.

So privileged to do life with you!

Oasis of Life

I think I have my computer working enough to get some more pictures up!

First, I want you to meet Godfrey. This is our driver and he is so kind. He is an advocate for orphans around here and he helps find many of them homes. He took us to do all the shopping for the orphanage and did the talking for us. He also took us to pay their electricity at the company and to the surgery to pay the medical bills. And he's even willing to help us serve the orphanage in the future by getting stuff to them when we aren't here to do it ourselves.

Here is our truckload of stuff
The dirt road leading up to the orphanage

Here we are pulling up and all the kids are getting ready to start pouring out. The man on the right is one of the pastors and he works hard at this orphanage. He couldn't believe what he was seeing:)
The kids peaking out of their gate to see who has come
Mama Harriet stays with the girls. She was beyond ecstatic!
Here are the kids starting their celebration of the fact that they have food!
Isn't he adorable!
My favorite pic of the day
They sang and sang for us:) Some of the songs we knew from the babies home so we were able to sing along
The boys did a song and dance too
And each of them took a turn coming to the front to do a solo dance. They were hilarious!
They danced on the ground

This is when we told them we were going to pay their electricity bill. Do you see mama Harriet in the top left, she grabbed a chair and started running around celebrating!
Here is one of the girls' rooms. Friends, SIXTEEN girls sleep in here. There are two bunkbeds that have three bunks each. You can do the math. They sleep a few to each bunk and some on the floor.
Some of the beds don't have mattresses, so they sleep on the wires.
But thanks to you, they don't have to anymore

This is Edith. She works at the babies home where we are staying and she is the one who took us to the orphanage. It's run by her church. But it's a poor church and they just don't have the resources to have an orphanage.

We brought them juice and they gave us a toast:)
What a DAY!

As I said in my post yesterday. We will be praying for discernment on if and how to help these little ones in the future. If you are interested in helping us, we will post more soon. The biggest struggle besides food is school fees and medical. If the kids could board at school, that would be best for them. So we need wisdom and direction.

Also, it's not best to just send or give money to places here. Sadly, the corruption is so bad, there's just no way to know where your money goes. That's why we buy the stuff and deliver it ourselves. We don't know if this organization is corrupt, they are sweet sweet people, but I just wanted to explain why we aren't just sending money. BUT if you want to give money, I will take it and make sure it gets used properly. Some people have still been asking if they can give. Thank you and absolutely!

I hope you were blessed by this post!!

Oasis of Life

Friends,

It is difficult to put the past two days into words. On Thursday K and I went shopping for basic necessities for the Oasis of Life Orphanage. You know how much I love to shop. So add to that the fact that I was shopping for children who needed it so badly...bliss. Our driver Godfrey, took us around town to buy all the things we were taking. We had to get a truck to get it all there! Thank you!!

There is something wrong with my computer so the picture above is the only one I can pull up right now, but I have lots more to share with you! This is a lot of the kids and to the left you can see the food, etc that we delivered.

We pulled up and friends, I just can’t describe to you their reaction. They all came running up to us and hugged us and they were clapping and saying, “It’s a miracle, It’s a miracle!” “God has sent you.” “It’s a miracle!” It was overwhelming to say the least and I could barely hold it together. We went inside the gate and they had us sit down and they sang to us song after song. They danced. They clapped. And they must have told us thank you a hundred times. Then they took us through the house, if you can call it that, and showed us their rooms. We went out back and saw that they didn’t have power or water because they couldn’t pay their bills.

There are about 30 kids there we think. The girls have a house and the boys stay a few roads over. The orphanage is run by a nearby church. They often have no food at all, and are lucky if they get one meal a day. So imagine when we pulled up with FOUR months worth of food!

Here's what we were able to do because of YOU!:

They have four months worth of food- Posho, beans, rice (staples in Uganda)

They have soap to bathe in and soap for clothes

They have electricity- we went to the power company and paid their debt and paid it forward so that they have at least 3 months of service.

They have toilet paper, toothbrushes, and toothpaste, vaseline for their skin

They have mattresses to sleep on. Some of the kids were sleeping on the wire part of the beds with no mattress. And they sleep 2 and 3 kids to a bed and several on the floor.

Their medical bills have been paid! The pastor was telling us that every time they need to take a child in they get hassled because they can't pay. We were able to go over to the doctor and clear their tab.

They ALL have shoes.

They ALL have mosquito nets.

Wow! Thank you from the bottom of my heart for what you just did for these kids! You are the hands and feet of Jesus! What you did for the least of these, you did for HIM!

When we went to the surgery (the doctor) there was a boy there from the orphanage. His teacher had beaten him so bad the day before that he couldn't walk or sit. He had to spend the night at the surgery. She beat him with a wire for not writing his name on his paper. Seriously, I was sick to my stomach.

School isn't free here and the teachers get upset because the orphanage can't pay for the students to go. So she took it out on poor Benjamin.

We prayed over Benjamin and paid his bill. I wish there was more I could have done. And I wanted to ring that teacher's neck! That's life here friends. It's hard.

This is not the last you will hear about this orphanage. Kim and I will be going home to talk and pray with our husbands about how to serve them in the future.

And lots more pictures when I figure out what's going on with my computer!

There is much work to be done here. I am grateful to be here. Doing this.

Amazed

We went in this morning to get the written ruling. K was looking over it and she realized it was wrong. It was for an adoption and she was granted guardianship per court order. Since they didn't match, we had to leave the ruling there and pray that it would be fixed by tomorrow. K called this afternoon to check on it and she was told that the judge CHANGED HER MIND and granted her a full adoption!!! Amazing!!!! We've never heard of a judge changing their mind here and doing something like that. We can't stop Praising God!!! He has done more than we asked or imagined!!!!
What's the difference between guardianship and an adoption? Guardianship allows you to take the child home but you must bring them back to Africa in three years to formally adopt them. And the paperwork is a little more tricky for the embassy. But with an adoption...well she's fully adopted now! And the visa process should be smooth and quick! AMAZING!!!!
Visa appt is tomorrow afternoon. We are hoping and praying we can leave early next week. Reese's first birthday is Wednesday and I want to be there to kiss and hug her little chubbs!

Love you all and thank you so much for your prayers!

Pray for Us

Well, it's been a hard day here in Uganda! One of the main reasons is because we still don't have the written ruling. We have the embassy appt on Wednesday but we'll have to cancel it if we don't have the ruling. We went to the lawyers office and one of the ladies walked us over to the judge's secretary and she was sleeping! Did you hear me?! She was asleep at her desk. grrrr We asked when it would be ready and she said she didn't know, come back at 4. TIA (This is Africa)
If we don't get the appt at the embassy this week, it will be next week before we would get one and then the week after that before it would be finished. Trusting the Lord, but it doesn't make the wait any easier for a mom who hasn't been home in 8 weeks!

Also, to clarify...Thank you so much for your interest in helping us serve the orphanage here! There is one in a nearby village that literally has nothing! They get one meal a day if they're lucky and they sleep 3&4 to a bed. Many of the beds don't even have mattresses, just springs that they sleep directly on. Kim and I are going to take food, clothing, mattresses, soap, etc... to them. The kids can't even go to school because they are too dirty, since they can't wash their clothes and take baths.
I am amazed at your generosity already! Thank you so much to those of you who are willing to help us! I cannot wait to see their faces when we pull up with a car full of stuff for them.
Of course I will take tons of pictures for you all to enjoy and I will be telling them about you!