Well, the big news on Mercy from this week... she is moving! Next weekend she will be moving in with Beth and Jeremy. For those of you thinking... "Really Melissa, you asked your friends that just moved across the world with 7 children to look after yours too??" I say, "They offered, begged (ok, maybe not begged), and continually assure me they want to and are looking forward to it." Seriously, Cody and I both told them that we really wanted them to pray about this and consult all of the family. They promise us that they are all on board. I think this will be a really great move for Mercy. This is where I will be staying when I get there, so it will mean one less "home" transition for her. She will hear more English. It will help her get used to mzungus (white people) and an American family. For a child coming from the village, our every day life seems like we are from another planet, so she will have many new things to learn and experience. And we can rest assured that she will get plenty of food, care and love. I'm also very excited that I will get to Skype with my baby girl and see her live and in action. Pray for Beth as she travels next weekend to pick up Mercy. And please pray for Mercy to make an easy transition to their home.
I also highly encourage you to check out Beth and Jeremy's website/blog. I love reading all about their new life and the wonderful ways God is already using them. I also love their brutal honesty. One great story... one of the babies' homes (orphanges) that several US families are adopting from is not too far from their house. Beth told me she planned to go check it out and that she'd be willing to get pictures/video of any of the kids for their adoptive parents. I posted her offer on an online Uganda Adoption Group that I belong to. She made some mamas very happy. =) One of the little girls had a birthday this week. So, The Howard Clan went to the party, took pics, and then set-up a laptop so that through Skype this little girl's family in the US could talk to her, sing to her, and experience her party. How awesome is that?! Beth says this orphanage is amazing and really works hard to love all of the children. They look forward to working with them more in the future.In other news... we were told we needed to wait, yet again, to file our adoption paperwork for a court date. It seems that during this recess some of the judges are being reassigned and moved around between divisions. The registrar (person who assigns you your judge) said we needed to wait until he knew which judges will be in the Family Division. The good thing is that this hopefully means there will be more judges hearing these cases. So, please pray for more judges, for them to be assigned soon, and for us to get a judge and court date soon. I feel like everytime we take a step forward in this process we hit another delay. But I really pray our time is coming. I have had two people tell me in the past week that they really feel we are close. I pray that they are right and I'll get to love on my girl very soon.
