Our son, his birthday and the future plans - part 3

This is the latest picture we have of Ephrem. He is wearing the soccer clothes we sent him.

Here he is on the top right and Tamara's son, who just graduated this last weekend (Emnatu), is in the pink shirt and tie.

Here we are at church with Tamara and her family in our Kolfe shirts that Tamara designed. They say "Forgotten no more (map of Africa w/heart on Ethiopia) The boys of Kolfe Orphanage Addis Ababa, Ethiopia" On the back is James 1:27.

Since Ephrem wanted a "J" name, we chose Jonathan or Joseph and let him choose (because our kids were arguing which one he should have). He chose Jonathan. He immediately changed his name to Ephrem Jonathan Diaz - I think because he had such a longing to belong and have a place in a family - an identity. I suggested he also keep his dad's name - Kibru, since that is an important part of him too. He just loves to hear the details of our life and our family. He always says to imagine that he is here eating with us or at the parties with us or swimming with us.

He is homesick for a home and family he barely knows. I keep telling him that here, the kids work A LOT cleaning and taking care of little ones etc and there is A LOT of noise and crying and very little soccer on tv and that mom and dad get mad sometimes and have a lot of rules (so he doesn't think it is a dreamland here). Of course he says he doesn't care - he just wants to be with his family some day. For the first time in 5 months, we skyped this last weekend with full video and sound on Javier's laptop. This meant that we could show him around. He watched some of the kids swimming, he could see Janae and her Grandpa working on her garden, he could see the table we eat meals at and the bedrooms etc. He loved it and we had a lot of good laughs. We also heard his voice for the first time - which was really fun.

July 21, was the date that we decided with him for his birthdate. We recently celebrated via skype, messages on facebook, and a video of the kids singing happy birthday to him. We also made him a cake. He pretended to eat it on skype and said it was sweet - LOL. It has been fun to see how the kids were so excited to make his cake and birthday card etc. Ministering and loving people cross culturally will always be natural for them. They know nothing different and I am thankful for that as I remember what kind of adults we aim to raise.

My friend, Tamara (also a Kolfe mama), and I hope to visit our boys soon. We still have no date, but we are waiting for some details to work out (I actually want to visit my boys' birth cities and I need to track down some important adoption paperwork to complete our readoption here in the states -errr).

Many people ask if we will bring him here. We do not know what the Lord will do. He is too old to be adopted. Maybe he could come on a student, work or visitor's visa in the future - none of which are easy to obtain. We don't know what the future holds, but we know that we are here to love and cheer him on whether we live near or far from him.