Travel Dates are Here

Some skilled guys and gals will be piloting us to Ethiopia real soon from a cockpit like this.  We have an appointment at the US Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on 6/21/2010.  This is huge.

Amber has been on the phone for 2 days with numerous travel agents, trying to find the best and cheapest itinerary possible.  Unfortunately, we're traveling in probably one of the biggest vacation months there is.  The rainy season is just getting started, and those who can are getting out of the country for a few months.  The quotes we have so far are pushing $3k per person.  We're also learning that additional baggage charges are prohibitively expensive, especially if you're originating a flight out of most of Europe for some reason.  I think we're probably looking at leaving on the 17th, returning on the 25th.  Please pray for a good flight itinerary on a good airline for an unbelievably cheap price to come together for us.

Donations for the orphanage and transition home are starting to collect, which is really great.  We fully intend to pack as light as possible for ourselves so we can bring as much as we possibly can to Ethiopia with us.  There's a donation-collection-party being organized by Amber's sister Brittany this week.  That's so cool.

We got to share a little at church this morning.  We were interviewed for about 10 minutes, while an Eleora slide show rolled on the screens.  I hope it was encouraging to somebody today.  Amber did a great job expressing all the important things about our adoption story and how God has really stretched us through it all.

Burden Me

The past couple weeks have seen more than their share of drama.  In a nutshell, we learned that our fingerprint paperwork for our Chinese adoption ended up at the US Embassy in Ethiopia.  It took almost two weeks of constant emails and phone calls to the USCIS, the NVC, Senator Boxer, Senator Feinstein, and Congressman Campbell, but the issue finally got resolved.  Of course, Amber did nearly all of the legwork.  She even had to drive to the USCIS office in LA and spend a day giving stone-cold office workers the guilt-trip showing them pictures of our little girl who can come home to us if only they would DO THEIR JOB.  It worked.  The right paperwork reached Ethiopia days later.  Awesome!

Now for the real topic of this post.  We want you to burden us.  Burden us down with donations to hand carry to Ethiopia.  Donations to meet real needs of real orphans.  We will hopefully be traveling to Ethiopia in a few weeks, and we plan to take as much cargo as we can handle with us.  It's way cheaper and way more reliable to be a "mule" and pay the extra luggage fees to get donations to the orphanages and transition home than it is to ship donations.  So this is a call for donations to take with us.  There are some specific needs that have been expressed by our agency:

• TOOTHPASTE (we already have over 150 toothbrushes)
• DEODORANT
• HAND SOAP
• CLOTHES PINS
• BOY'S UNDERWEAR (sizes 6 and under specifically)
• TODDLER-10 YEAR OLD UNDERWEAR (boys & girls)
• SIZE SMALL SCRUBS FOR NANNIES ("5 for 10" stores have deals)
• BABY WIPES
• SOCCER BALLS & PUMPS (for the street kids)
• BABY BOUNCER SEATS

It would be a great problem to have if we had more donations than we could possibly manage.  If you're interested in dropping off some donations, please drop me (Bryan) a line so we can work out the details.  

Introducing Eleora Marije Booy

Our adoption petition passed the court process in Ethiopia last night!  She is now legally our new daughter!  We've chosen the name Eleora Marije Booy.  Check out the little slideshow we put togheter last weekend.  I'll post more details later, but it looks like we might travel to get her sometime in July or August.


Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.