Day 4

Tuesday November 3rd-

Started off with some good french toast. :-) the boys are doing good. Dawit not sleeping too well but that's ok. We had plans to go shopping to the big outside market. Well- this is the day our trip changed even more. While waiting for our driver, the guy who was exchanging our money and the guy who was going with to help us translate, there was a fight outside the gate at the guest house. The drama of the day/trip began. We watched as our friend, who was to take us, was handcuffed and taken away. This is the edited version of the incident as just thinking about it make me sick to my stomach. AGAIN! So- to make a long story short, we ended up leaving the guest house in a matter of 10 minutes and looking for a new place to stay. One AMAZING part of this is... while we were all locked in our room feeling a lot of fear and not knowing what was going to happen next, my Gavin, who was sitting by me on the bed leaned up to me and muffled, "mom, let's say a prayer." It was such a tender moment. My boy who can be such a stinker knows! He has some faith that he knows that prayers are heard and answered. Dave said a prayer and I know that is what got us through the day. It was a very emotional day as our trip of a lifetime turned out to be more of a nightmare than anything. So just typing this makes me cry when I think back to the trip. It was not at all what we expected. It was not the beautiful experience we were hoping to have. It was not a perfect adventure. I can't tell you how many times I just wished we could get on a plane and "get out of there". (with the boys of course!) After leaving the Guest House we drove to the Hilton- no rooms available, we drove to the Sheraton- no rooms. I am crying of course. We ended up getting rooms at another Hotel and this was also an answer to prayer. The Hilton and Sheraton were so expensive and this Hotel was just the right price and nice for us. Nardos came into our lives this day. She is the BFAS adoption coordinator in Ethiopia. SHE is so GREAT!! Our week got better with her around!! We spent the rest of Tuesday trying to settle into our new place and just waiting for Thursday embassy day and Saturday go home day. Another family arrived and came to stay at the Hotel with us. We went to dinner. It was more like mystery food. I couldn't eat anyways- too much going on. We called it a day and made plans for a better Wednesday.