Adah Derartu's 5th Birthday

She looks like she's growling at me. ;-)

Birthday Princess!

Adah Derartu-5

Joel and California History

Monday we went to a California History walk-thru that was hosted by our school. The kids answer questions on California history and have different vocabulary words that they have memorized and share with everyone.

Mom

MARTIN, AGNES A. (GRIESHABER, NEMES) Agnes A. Martin born on June 15, 1933, passed away peacefully in her home on October 13, 2011. She was surrounded by her children Peggy DeNechocea (Tony), Betty Samaniego (Albert), Gene Grieshaber Jr. (Joni), Steve Grieshaber (Vikki), Greg Grieshaber (Debbie) and 22 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren. She loved playing the horses at Del Mar, cards with her friends, and watching the Chargers and Padres. Her happiest times were spent with her large family, especially when being teased by them. Her life will be celebrated on October 23rd from 12 to 4 p.m



My mother-in-law passed away last week. It was unexpected and it was quick. Two weeks ago she called Steve and told him she was going to the er by ambulance for shortness of breath. He told her he would meet her there since he was at work and about twenty minutes to a half-hour away from where she was. That was Thursday. They decided to keep her in the hospital because they thought she had pneumonia. Her oxygen saturation level was in the 70's and she needed closer monitoring.

She'd had a lump in her neck but thought it was possibly thyroid cancer like I had years ago. She was going to get a biopsy eventually, it was scheduled, but since she was already in the hospital it was decided to do one there.

On Friday she was diagnosed with cancer. The lump in her neck turned out to be a tumor that had wrapped itself around an artery and the bone in her neck.

On Saturday different family members spent the day with her.

On Sunday Steve went up to spend the whole day with her.

On Monday we both went up and the oncologist came in while we were there and basically told us the cancer was untreatable. Even with chemo it might add three months on to her life. It was decided that she wouldn't do chemo and go home on hospice instead.

On Tuesday we had a meeting with the hospice team and her little studio apt was set up with hospice care equipment and she went home about 6:30 that night. Steve and I went home and our niece, her husband and Steve's sister went to moms to help her get settled and Steve's sister was staying with mom.

On Wednesday about 3:00 in the morning we get a call to come because mom has taken a turn for the worst. This wasn't even twelve hours later! She was pretty unresponsive but I did help her get up one last time to try and use the restroom. We got her back in bed and changed her top since she was damp and clammy.

She would open her eyes and respond if someone spoke to her. I was able to tell her thanks for taking me in when I was only fifteen and for taking me on as a daughter. She told me, "You're welcome."  Most of the grandkids who lived in town and all of her kids were able to be there on Tuesday. We had fun together remembering our family times, we would get shushed to be quiet when we got too loud, but most importantly we were there to help mom pass from this world to the next. Every now and then she would ask us to help her sit up so she could look at everyone in the room and then lie back down.

We ended up going home that evening. Thursday I went to home school class day like I do every Thursday and then went to the doctors because of my darn leg. While I was in the drs. office Steve called to say that his mom had died.

She would have wanted it that way. She would have wanted to go quickly. She wouldn't have wanted to linger on needing someone else to take care of her. She was feisty. She told it like it was. She was tolerant of others as much as she could be. If you rubbed her the wrong way well, then, she had no patience for you, but it didn't take much to win her approval. You just had to be nice to her. That was it!

Back in 1976 I moved in with mom when I was only a fifteen year old teenager with a past of running away from home. I lived with her my high school years until we moved out and got an apartment of our own, when I was a senior in high school.  She called every birthday and anniversary. Her kids and her grandkids were her pride and joy. They could do nothing wrong.

She was loved. She will be missed. She left quite a legacy. Five children, twenty-two grandchildren, fifteen great-grandchildren.

School pics for the girls

 Addis-13

 Abi Mulu-10

 Anna Mihret-5

Adah Derartu-5

Aren't they the cutest?

Hana Williams and Older Child Adoption

I'm sure you have heard of Hana Williams by now. If not just google Larry and Carri Williams or Hanna Williams and you'll find the story. Hana was adopted about the same time Addis and Mulu were adopted. I identify with the story for several reasons.  One is when she was adopted which was in 2008 and Addis and Mulu were adopted in 2008. Another reason is that my girls were older as was Hana. ( Which is pronounced hah nuh. ) My girls were also older than we thought, one at least a year and the other at least two years and she aged a year in the process. Addis was supposed to be younger than my youngest son, but when we received her Ethiopian birth certificate her birthdate was stated that she was ten months older than he was. We accepted it and went on. What we didn't know was that she was older than two of our boys, not just one. We also homeschool as did the Williams family and have also read To Train Up a Child by Michael and Debi Pearl. We even sold their books and many other Christian books when we had a Christian bookstore on ebay. We had enough sense not to put into place the child training techniques that the Pearls advocate with our biological children, but especially not with an adopted child.

There is a facebook page in remembrance of Hana: https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/156422897766042/  You'll find access to many of the articles that have been published about the case and you might even find the report by the sheriff's or child protection dept. There are pictures as well.

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Hana's story was being discussed on our adoptive Yahoo group and this is what I wrote about it.



I've been part of the facebook group for a while and have watched this unfold. It is horrible. There are several issues going on that in my mind attributed to all of this.

There are a lot of different dynamics that went on in this family. They were
homeschooling. I have homeschooled for the last twenty-three years so I
know what some of the homeschooling community is like. If you're not careful it's easy to get caught in manipulation and how things should be done by "experts." Many of these "experts" are men. One of them has never even been married and had his own family, Bill Gothard of IBLP. If any of you watch 19 Kids and Counting then you can see Gothard teaching in practice. In their earlier shows everybody all dressed alike.

With homeschooling the parents have to have control of the children so the
training comes in. I have read Pearl books, I have read them all. Since I have
parented for twenty-eight years with seven boys I've had my fair share of
discipline and training issues. With my two older boys who are now 28 and 26.  I was too strict and after they turned eighteen and saw how they turned out we changed our parenting methods.

Then I think the Williams home-churched so the children were not in the public eye. No one saw these children on a regular basis. If I don't bring one of my girls people at church ask where they are. They're a visible part of our church family.

Add in that they were older when they were adopted. Hana was years older than her parents thought. This also happened to us. Our oldest Ethiopian daughter is eleven on paper. We thought she was more like fourteen but her ET father believes she is thirteen. She was fifty-six pounds when she arrived here three years ago, and within weeks of proper nutrition she started developing and a year later started her cycle. She has since doubled her weight and sees the dr. regularly for physicals and such.

One thing that needs to be addressed in the adoption community is older child
adoption. There is not enough training for people to know what they are getting into. Many times we have a romantic idea of what it is, and in reality it can be quite different. We have been blessed with our two older girls. They have not been troublesome in any way. Not that we didn't have issues and not that issues don't come up. But had we had not parented through the teens already (x4) our outcome could have been much different.

We did attend the Older Child adoption training that Kingdom Kids offered back in 2007 and that was very helpful. We need to attend Orphan and Adoption Conferences when they are offered. We need hair care training. We need to know how to attach to others when our inclination is to build a wall and turn away. I believe there needs to be more mentoring and in-real-life training. We can read books and do all the online training in the world, but until the rubber meets the road many times parents are not equipped to handle the baggage their children come home with. These kids have a past. They have memories. We need to honor what their past is and help them deal with it good or bad.

We have encouraged our older daughters to correspond with their father in
Ethiopia. If I had known better I would have kept their Ethiopian names, but was counseled otherwise. One of our daughters does have their original name, but three do not. We are active in an Ethiopian church when we can be, and our oldest daughter goes to the youth group with other Ethiopian teens. It's the one place where she can be with other kids who are like her. It also helps her pick up pieces of the language she has lost.

We are in process right now to adopt a girl from a disruption here in the USA.
She was adopted in April 2010 from Ethiopia. We will have to do more work andmore healing with her than our other girls simply because of the disruption. Why didn't the Williams disrupt? According to the group page on fb Carri Williams was a very proud and self-righteous person and wouldn't have admitted failure. All of us have to be open and transparent with one another and help each other through the tough times. They will be there. Who can we turn to? We can't judge one another when another mom comes to you and admits her failures. We need to build one another up and provide respite care if possible. We need to become a family. Each of our communities should be tight knit. We don't want another Hana among us.

(This was edited for things that did not apply or were too personal.)
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Adoption Update

It has been a year now that we've been in process with Ethiopia. We accepted our referral back in March and had our dossier to Ethopia in June. The reality is that we're no further along than we were a year ago. We received a phone call the end of September saying it could be another 2-6 months and that didn't include court or embassy. Others have accepted their referrals months after we did and turned in their dossier months after we did, but they have court dates. We don't. I can't wait until she is legally ours so I can tell her story.

I have been a bit frustrated with our domestic adoption process. We have been told from the beginning that we could use our international homestudy for the purpose of placing M in our home. This has been going on since August. It has gone to the state level and now back to the local level and no decision has been made. We are forging ahead with a domestic homestudy but could have had it done by now. I have paid two different agencies and backed out for various reasons and today I drove over an hour each way to hand deliver our agreement and a hefty check. They don't know if they will accept our case or not. The policy this agency has is that they only place one unrelated child per year in a home. They didn't know we were still in process with ET. That is why we have an international homestudy. We're ready to parent M, we want her home, yet red tape slows the process.

The best thing would be for San Diego County Adoptions to pop up and say YES!!! you can use the international homestudy to place her and then for the adoption finalization you will have to do a domestic homestudy. We're okay with that! We want her home as quick as possible and it seems like it is dragging on f.o.r.e.v.e.r.

Yesterday we had other adoptive families over for the afternoon. All the families have adopted from Ethiopia and we all lived in San Diego County except for my friend B. We the parents had a great time visiting and learning and sharing stories while the kids played and ran and had a great time.

Missionary Biographies for kids

One of the classes I teach for our local homeschool group is Christian Missionaries and Heroes. Last week there were only four students in the class but they they enjoyed what we studied. We learned about Adoniram and Ann Judson, the first foreign bound Missionaries from America. I will teach again this week and there are about fifteen students in that class.

                                                  
The books we base our lessons are are from YWAM (Youth With a Mission) and then From Jerusalem  to Irian Jira usually sums it up for us and has pictures included in the pages. Christian Heroes: Then and Now  I have an atlas with me so we can look at what part of the world they ministered to. In Adorniram and Ann's case it was Burma which is now Myanmar which is east of India next to Thailand.



I just received some of the unit study books by the same company. With my
busy schedule I needed something to help me bring some cohesiveness to the
lesson.
 
                                                   

This is the description of the biography on their page:
As America's first foreign missionary, Adoniram Judson spent thirty-eight years working in Burma, then one of the most hostile countries on earth. Judson was ignored, mocked, beaten, and tortured, yet he never lost sight of his goal to translate the Bible into the Burmese language. Today, over 150 years after his death, his remains the only translation of the Bible in Burmese. (1788-1850)

This best-selling, missionary biography series - Christian Heroes: Then & Now - chronicles the exciting, challenging, and deeply touching true stories of ordinary men and women whose trust in God accomplished extraordinary exploits for His kingdom and glory.

Subject: Fight the Famine, Feed the Future

Drought is inevitable, but famine is not. The current crisis in the Horn of Africa is the result of a tragic combination of factors that are man-made, including abnormally high food prices, lack of governance and security in Somalia, and a historic lack of investment in long-term agricultural development in the Horn. Over the past few years, we lost the political will and public support necessary to prevent the famine – and its causes. As a consequence, tens of thousands of children have died.

We have also missed the opportunity to help 200 million people from poor farming families lift themselves out of poverty. Communities in Africa can cope with droughts and natural disasters. But we need donors to put resources toward seeds, irrigation and teaching farmers new growing techniques. We need leaders to invest in early warning systems and national social safety net programs.

Congress can help keep our commitment to farmers in developing countries by fully funding Feed the Future— a life-changing USAID initiative that is investing in long-term agricultural development and could help put an end to famine for good.

Please sign our petition to Congress calling on them to fund this vital program:

http://act.one.org/sign/hungry_no_more_us?referring_akid=.5593850.FVTptI

Thank you!

Katie Davis of Amazima



and her new book Kisses From Katie

is going to be at Shadow Mountain Community Church THIS Sunday night at 6pm. Katie went to Uganda on a mission trip and ended up going back and is mother to fourteen girls. The kicker?! She's in her early twenties!!! I'm going-are you?!