Adoption Blog

New Staff at the America World Ethiopia Transition Home

We are excited to announce new staff members to our Ethiopia Transition Home Team.  Please keep an eye out over the next few weeks as we introduce our new full time Pediatrician, Developmental Psychologist and Teacher.

Dr. Wondwossen Desta

We are excited to have Dr. Wodwossen Desta join our team as  a full time Pediatrician at our Transition Home clinic.  His past medical experience is broad with extensive experience in pediatric tuberculosis, HIV,  and birth trauma.  He has also been recognized for his award winning research on Malaria.
 
Dr. Wondwossen believes in combining his medical skills with his Christian belief and addressing not only a child’s medical problems but also spiritual and psychological. He is working with all departments at the Transitional Home to ensure that  children's needs are met in all of these areas.
 
Dr. Wondwossen will be consulting with all Ethiopia families about their adoptive child on "Gotcha day".    Dr. Wondwossen states, " I already care greatly for this these children and eagerly look forward to meeting the adoptive families who love them."

AWAA Africa Family Reunion

Branson, MO
Labor Day weekend

We are thrilled to announce that 25 families attended the 1st annual AWAA Africa Family Reunion in Branson, MO over the Labor Day weekend!  What an incredible time of fellowship and celebrating together the miracle of adoption!  We started off the event with a special Meet & Greet at Payne Stewart Country Club.  Watching children reuniting with their friends from several Ethiopian orphanages and Transitional Home was a remarkable testimony of God's love and faithfulness.
We spent the weekend exploring the Ozarks... brunch, park fun, Branson show and a day at Silver Dollar City riding rides and connecting with new friends.

 

My personal highlight was holding again several of the children that had been waiting in Ethiopia for their new families.  At the time, they did not understand they were part of a big miracle God was preparing.  They are now home thriving, bonding, growing and loving their forever family.  Adoption is a gift from God!

We passed the reunion torch to the AWAA Nashville, TN families.  See you next year!!

Blessings,
Kari Gibson, Kelly Blackwell & Kim Gillman- Missouri hosts

Hamilton Family Featured in Knoxville Newspaper

 

University of Tennessee Athletic Director Mike Hamilton, and his wife Beth were recently featured in the Knoxville New Sentinel after adopting siblings from Ethiopia.  The Hamilton’s share how God brought this family of seven together through domestic and international adoption.  You can read their amazing story at http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2009/aug/23/ut-athletic-director-tells-how-he-and-his-wife-wer.

The Work Coninues

Two of the planned four murals have been completed at our Ethiopia Transitional Home in Addis Ababa!

Next on the project list is to get the floor refinished and taking down one of the classroom walls down and pushing it further out to give the children more room and lighting.  Once the wall is completed, one of the remaining two murals will go here.

The kids, of course, are so wonderful!  They just love and hug on us and are very well behaved.  And they LOVE the murals!

As always, thank you to everyone who has given so freely of their time, money and prayers for our Orphan's Ticket Home campaign.  It is because of your selfless giving that this project is even possible.  We would still like to raise a bit more money as construction and decoration continues and as we seek to buy new baby beds and construct bunkbeds so that there will be more space in the bedrooms for the children.  If you would like to donate to this endeavor, you may click here.  Be sure to note that your donation is for "Decorating the Ethiopia Transitional Home."

Visiting Orphans, America World's sister company that focuses on missions trips, also founded by CEO, Brian Luwis, is already planning another trip to Addis Ababa in November.  This team's work and efforts will focus on any projects that this current team is unable to complete before their departure.  If you are interested in this trip you can find out more information on Visiting Orphan's Fall 2009 Missions Trips page.  If interested in attending this trip, you can apply here.

The Work Begins on the Ethiopia Transitional Home

The prepatory work for decorating our Ethiopia Transitional Home has begun for the team that is traveling to Addis Ababa tomorrow.  As you can see a primer base is being painted.  We moved the babies into another room so they can paint their room with gorgeous murals that an adoptive mom out of Utah is creating for us! You can see some of her work here.   God has really given her creative ideas and a joy for this work.  They also hope to change some of the light fixtures in the home (unless you like this disco ball light fixture! :)) and buy material to sew window treatments. 

Thanks to all of you for your donations to An Orphan's Ticket Home which is making this possible.  We'd still like to raise about $5K more to be able to refinish the wood floors and purchase the lighting fixtures needed.  You can donate to this endeavor here.  Please be sure to note that your donation is for "Decorating the Ethiopia Transtitional Home".

Also, Visiting Orhans, a mission sending agency that our own President Brian Luwis founded is sending another team to Addis in November. This team will help with any work on the Ethiopia Transitional Home that this current team is unable to complete.  If you'd like to go and help, please let us know and apply online here.  Craftsmen, electricians and anyone with creative ideas is welcome!

Two Boys...Two Lives

Our team had a great, full day which is pretty typical of most Visiting Orphans mission trips.  We started at our America World Transitional Home. There were many children and many babies and each one of them were wonderful.  It warmed our hearts so much to know that our Ethiopia program staff is working diligently to place each child in the arms of their forever family.  I wanted to take a moment to highlight one particular child.  This child, a boy about seven years old, has been on our Waiting Child List for a number of months.  He's smart, well behaved and very artistic and LOVES to laugh!  When all the children sang, "This is the Day, this is the day that the Lord has made..." he smiled the most and sang the loudest.  You can see a picture of him with my husband, Simon on America World’s Ethiopia Waiting Children’s website. I honestly fought back big tears as I took this picture. I pray you will be touched by the story of this little boy and that it will bless you and your family immensely.  There is such a great need for homes for children his age.  If you are interested in information about adopting a waiting child, please contact America World Adoption.

It was awesome to visit the home and meet all of our staff. This program has grown so much, and it was wonderful to see and witness.  We have sixty nannies on staff and four nurses! It was beautiful to see that every crying child was tended to by our staff.  Our Orphan's Ticket Home campaign helps fund some of these needs at the transitional home and we appreciate your generous contributions.  This is SUCH a blessing to see!! 

After the transition home, we went to play soccer with the street kids and tell them about the love of Christ.  We saw two young boys fighting over the glue they were sniffing.   Visiting Orphans has chosen to visit the street kids like this on each trip, but this was the first time I met any boys addicted to glue.  So, with my friend, Ephraim, who has this ministry with the street boys we began telling him and all the other boys and strangers there about Jesus and all he did on the cross to set us free. We then led him in prayer to receive Christ.  We are not sure if it was heartfelt or not, but either way he heard the gospel and so did many others.  After we shared with him, we brought him to the Ethiopia Guest house and let him shower, gave him some new clothes, some food and made sure he had plenty to take home with him.  We then prayed with him again making sure he understood that Christ was the one who provided for him. We told him that Jesus and our team loved him. Ephraim promised to keep ministering to him and to continue to meet with him and the other street kids he mentors.  Please say a prayer for him as he has a big addiction to overcome.  Please also pray for both Ephraim and the street boys that God would work mightily in this ministry.

Tomorrow we will visit one of Mother Theresa’s homes and the AHOPE HIV orphanage.  It will be an even harder day for the team emotionally as both homes have sick babies and children.  We want to leave a lasting hope with them though, so please pray for us.

Thank you,

Amanda Lawrence, Director of Development

**To join our next mission trip to Ethiopia where you can visit and work with the orphans and street kids, please visit www.visitingorphans.org.

A Beautiful Reunion

A little over a year ago, five AWA adoptive families brought together by the common thread of adoption met at a traditional Ethiopian restaurant. The families, most of whom had only met via the Internet, were all anxiously awaiting referrals from Ethiopia. The evening was filled with laughter, fellowship,and lots of excitement over the children who awaited them in Ethiopia.
 
A few weeks ago, these same families met at the same traditional Ethiopian restaurant, only this time, each had an additional family member- their precious children from Ethiopia!
 
What a beautiful reunion it was! What an awesome picture of God's faithfulness and goodness to these five families and their children. Praise him for the miracle of adoption!
 
For great is his love toward us, and the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever. Praise the Lord.
Psalm 117:2

from left to right- Rebecca Caldwell and Caleb, Melissa Juvinall and Iona, Chad Bowman and Natalie, KP Moles and Levi, Katie Redfern and Judson

One Love Coffee Roasters - Help Finance Your Adoption & the Ethiopia Transitional Home!

   

One Love Coffee Roasters’ two primary focuses are coffee and orphans. Rob Webb, founder of One Love Coffee Roasters, and an America World adoptive dad knows personally how expensive the adoption process is.  The thought of having to raise tens of thousands of dollars to adopt a child is staggering to many.  It can be the obstacle that stands in the way of a family’s commitment to adopt, and many times slows down the process of bringing an adoptive family’s child(ren) home. Many people don’t know where to start.  One Love Coffee Roasters wants to be that starting point for raising money to help unite families with their children.

 

"We try to make it as simple as possible. One Love does not ask or require you to purchase anything. We handle all of the order processing: we set up a web page specifically for your family with the coffees you have chosen to sell, fulfill the orders, collect payment securely online, and then send you checks for your portion of the sales for each month. All that the adoptive family needs to do is to fill out the application to validate your adoption process, send the link to their One Love web page to as many people as possible to generate sales for the fundraiser, and notify us when your adoption is complete!

 

When the adoption is complete, your friends and family who purchased One Love Coffee can continue to do so on our main storefront and continue to support orphans with a portion of the proceeds of all One Love Coffees going to the AWAA Transition Home in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

It’s that simple!

 

Our current goal is to sign up 100 families before September 2009, when we will officially open our doors for business. Just visit http://www.onelovecoffees.com, click on the “Sign Up” link at the top menu, complete the form, and your store will be ready to go when we launch in September."

 

AWAA Africa Reunion!

We are excited to announce the first ever America World Africa Family Reunion!  This event is open to all America World Adoption families who have completed their adoptions through one of our Africa programs or are currently in the process!  The reunion will take place in Branson, MO during Labor Day Weekend.

For more details on scheduling, planned activities and places to stay, visit: www.awafricareunion.blogspot.com.  You may also get in contact with the hostesses for this event, Kari Gibson, Kelly Blackwell & Kim Gillman, through the above link.

To show your support and help spread the word about the Africa Reunion, you can add the below button to your webpage or blogsite by simply copying the below code and pasting it wherever you desire!

 <p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://awafricareunion.blogspot.com/"><img alt="awaa-reunion" width="170" src="http://www.gosmalley.com/images/AWAA-Reunion.png" class="size-full wp-image-2683 aligncenter" height="174" title="awaa-reunion" /></a></p>

Ethiopia Family Reunion - Branson, MO

A passionate Ethiopia adoptive America World Mom, Keri Gibson, is planning a family reunion this Labor Day weekend in Branson, MO and an invitation goes out to all Ethiopia adoptive families to join them.  You can find out more about this reunion on the Reunion Blog here.