You made the paper!

Here is the ad that is in the local Ugandan paper to announce your adoption.

THE REPUBLIC OF UGANDA

IN THE MATTER OF AN APPLICATION BY JOHN ESTIN DAVIS AND AMY GRAY DAVIS FOR LEGAL GUARDIANSHIP OF MBEDHA JOAN

 (MINOR)

GENERAL NOTICE

  Mbedha Joan

Born on 13rd January 2012

Both Father (Isabirye Bategana) and Mother (Tyamisa Aidha) are deceased.

NOTICE is hereby given to any surviving relative of the above child Mbedha Joan of Magamaga village, Buwenge Sub County Jinja District and to all whom it may concern that a Petition is being filed at the High Court of Uganda at Kampala for the Legal Guardianship of the above mentioned child. Unless you contact; The Probation and Social welfare services department of Jinja District, Shared Hope for Orphans Uganda, Buwenge Town Council Jinja District, we shall proceed with filing of the petition. 

Dated at Kampala this 11^th day of July 2013.

………………......................

M/S ANGUALIA BUSIKU & CO. ADVOCATES

COUNSEL FOR THE PETITIONERS

Drawn and prepared by;

M/s Angualia Busiku & Co. Advocates

Plot 3 Parliament Avenue,

Raja Chambers, 1^st Floor Suite No. 32

P.O. Box 27689 Kampala.

www.lawyers-uganda.com

Dear Eliana...

Eliana,

We heard from the attorney today you will be in the newspaper this Friday or Saturday (and can I tell you how cute your picture is?). This is mandatory in Uganda , to make sure all are aware of the adoption. Also, this week your grandmother and uncle will be signing a petition for you to have a forever home in the US with a mommy, daddy, and brothers. They are so excited to see you have a better life and to thrive with a family. I can't wait to meet your grandmother and ask her so many questions about you and learn about your culture.
You are truly a blessing. There are so many times in life when we have no control and no clue as to what is ahead. Adopting you is a perfect example of God's grace and perfect plan. I can think of nothing stronger than the urge of wanting to protect my children, and now...you are my child and my instinct is to want you to be safe and well.  I pray for you and hope for you, safety, until we arrive to give you more love than you can even comprehend.
We love you already and we are so grateful for the gift of you.

Mommy

Introducing....

Oh my goodness...what a couple of weeks of emotional ups and downs. Whew!

A HUGE blessing is we are moving forward...

With a sweet little 17 month old girl.   Both of her parents are deceased and she has been with her grandmother who is extremely poor and her living conditions were pretty bad. She is staying in the orphanage director's home right now with he, his wife, and kids, as she is pretty sick and malnourished and needs time to get stronger. She is a teeny little thing right now...weighs less than 20 pounds...to put that in perspective.. all of my boys weighed 20 pounds at 6 months old! She speaks Lusoga, a Ugandan language. Since she is so small, she doesn't speak much anyway, so learning English should be easy for her.

Court is closed from July15-Aug 15 so we will not be able to go until after Aug 15. We have a lot to prepare for between now and then!

We are beyond thrilled to welcome her into our family! We have decided to name her "Eliana Abigail" Eliana means "God has answered" and "Abigail means "My Fathers Joy".  We will most likely call her "Ellie". And here she is in all her cuteness...:)

Cute with a freshly shaven head!

Please pray with us that everything goes smoothly with her and we are so blessed and thankful that  "God Has Answered"!

Waiting once again...

I know many of you know that we lost the referral of little Sofia about a week ago. If you do not, the short version of the story is, after a necessary newspaper advertisement stating our adopting her, a brother of her late father came forward and would not sign the affidavit to continue with her adoption. We looked into fighting against him, however, after 3 meetings with the orphanage director as well as our Ugandan attorney, the family decided for us to cease proceeding with the case, due to family problems and their discrepancies with the American culture. We are so sad to not be able to proceed, yet we know we did all we could, and as hard as it is, these things just happen sometimes in international adoption. It's part of what we signed up for on this journey (as bad as it stinks).

So what does this mean now? We wait and although it will be hard not to get TOO attached to pictures, we will move forward with whatever child chooses for us (and that should be very soon). I have heard a couple of times of people losing 2 referrals, but odds are on our side that will not happen:)

 Once again, it's all out of our control, just prayers for our future child, and our family as we navigate through this process.

Travel shots!

John and I received our travel vaccines yesterday. We had to get 6, yes 6, shots! Yellow fever, meningitis, hepatitis A, tetanus, and 2 more I can't remember! We got medicine we will take daily for malaria while there and then continued for a week when home, and an antibiotic for both of us (with multiple refills) to take with us for not IF but WHEN we get diarrhea. Apparently it's rare NOT to pick up something while there!

Progress

I heard from our attorney in Uganda today, who has been amazing so far with communicating with us, and the newspaper advertisements have been placed. Also, her 2 surviving relatives are meeting at his office tomorrow at 2:00 to sign the affidavit that confirms their consent to the adoption After this, we sign and it is sent to court to receive our court date. Time is ticking very quickly so we are hoping and praying for that court date before court closures in mid-July!

Here is a copy below of what is in their local paper:

BIG NEWS!!!

We are so happy to finally be able to announce we have been matched!
I just knew..

A) Our baby would be a boy
B) Our baby would be a young BABY , i.e.: under 18 months
C) Our little one would come in God's perfect timing and when we least expected it

Turns out, I was only right about C....


Long story short, we were presented with an opportunity to consider a toddler, just a little over 10 months shy of Eli's age to be exact (2.5 years)...although I was a little hesitant at first, as I had not "planned " for that.   After receiving pictures of this sweet, beautiful little GIRL, praying, and just simply "having the feeling" that this is our daughter...we have accepted her and are moving forward with adopting her into our family! We are beyond excited (and many other adjectives that would be impossible to describe) and praying for a quick process to get her home!

Her name is "Sofia", we are so thankful that she has a beautiful name that we will keep! She lost both of her parents shortly after birth..lived with her sick grandmother up until about a month ago when she was relinquished to an orphanage in Jinja, Uganda.  She speaks NO English! Her language is Lugandan. Uganda's national language is English but many of the small villages speak their own languages, and hers happens to be one of those! So, we definitely have our work cut out for us with communicating for a while. The rest of her story will be hers to tell:)

We are possibly looking at a court date the week of July 8th. Court closes in Uganda for a month from July 15-Aug. 15 for rainy season so if not that week , it will have to be after court reopens in August.

So, since I have made this blog private (we can in no way ever post a picture publicly until we are officially legal guardians of her)...I can post on here:) So here she is...

The first picture we ever saw of Sofia

The most recent pic, taken last week at her medical appointment- how cute!

 The orphanage director said he would let her hair grow (they shave all girls heads) so it looks like I need to figure out quickly how to take care of it! He also told her that she has a mommy and daddy that live in the United States and will be coming for her soon and he said she is so happy and smiled really big.

We are so grateful for everyone's prayers and support and feel so blessed to be able to be on this journey. We have a lot of work ahead of us to get her here...paperwork, court, travel, etc...but now that we have a sweet face to look forward to, we know it will all be worth it.

What's going on!

Wow, it has been a while since I have posted...baseball, school getting out, vacation, etc, has kept us all so very busy! This adoption process has been challenging at times to say the least, especially since my impatient nature doesn't like to wait...but the good news is, things are moving along and soon enough we will have news to share. At this point, I do feel it will be best to make our blog private...as when we do have our little one we can share with close friends and family, without worries of anything that could potentially hurt our case. We are not allowed to show pictures of our little one publicly, when we do receive them, until we have been to court in Uganda.:( 

There have been surprises every step of the way and I know good and bad, that will continue to happen, but we are in and ready for the next step..we are SO close!

Please let me know if you do want to follow privately and I will approve it:)

Much love and thank you for all of your prayers!

Amy

A little from Mr. Lewis..

I love this so much I had to share..Happy Sunday:)

Waiting waiting..

I know, it's been SO long since I have posted! We are just waiting still so honestly there has been nothing to post! I have been planning on baby rooms- one if a girl and one if a boy..and somewhat thinking of names..but we want to wait until we have our referral until we really go into really thinking about all of the details. Reading books, reading about attachment with our little one to teach he/she who mommy and daddy are, etc. I am trying to stay away from negative blogs and books..as much as I want to be prepared for what "could" go wrong...to me, just like with pregnancy...all the things I really worried about never really happened and some of the things I didn't worry about did. So that's enough proof to me to just not allow my mind to go down that road.
We had Ty who was a preemie in the nicu at birth for a couple of weeks and then hospitalized in critical care with a 106 fever at 12 months with a respiratory infection for a week and then Gray, who was sent to the nicu bc his cord was wrapped so tightly he was blue and wouldn't cry, and then at 4 weeks suffered two skull fractures..and then at 3 months got RSV and was ill for over 8 weeks....and THEN Eli was extremely sick in critical care at Vandy at 2 weeks old with RSV. So, honestly, to say the newborn phase makes me nervous is an understatement. All I can think about with a teeny one is sickness and panic! Although the road ahead is unknown and filled with uncertainty, I have learned from my three boys to just not even plan on a "normal". And looking back on all of those times and panic and tears..I am oddly thankful to have learned so much in every situation.

I have my days when I am fine with the wait, and others I am just sick of it already! I get angry that there is so much red tape that lies in between a needy child and a family that wants to care for them. It makes me frustrated that I can't make it happen quickly. But, through this, there is also the lesson that we are in no way in control of this and never have I leaned more heavily on the words "hope" and "faith".
Thank you so much again for your support, your prayers, your words of encouragement, your donations, tshirt orders...anything and everything you have done to help this process of getting our baby home! Our coordinator said April-May so thinking this next month may be it!