It can be a little uncomfortable to accept –

I know we have talked about this before, so I do apologize if our blog is being redundant, but it is something that I am just going to have to get off my chest – just in case there are others out there in the same situation.

KC and I finally got up enough nerves this week and the realization that we could travel anytime to Ethiopia (after we receive our court date, which could also be any day), and we don’t have enough money on hand to pay for our plane tickets there and back. I am not sure if any of you others in the adoption world have been faced with situations like that, but it isn’t necessarily a good feeling. So we have thought, prayed, thought, and prayed about what we should do about this ‘minor’ situation and it became very clear. For several weeks we have had some close friends, coworkers, wonderful case workers who are connected with our adoption and others who are or have adopted encourage us to send out letters to people we know asking them for donations. Right away I was thinking, “Now way. Are you serious? Do you know what people will say about us if we do that? Asking for money? Really? We don’t do that. We can’t do that. This is something that we have decided to do and we will figure out a way for us to handle it.” Man was I wrong.

Well, after I finally got the macho ego out of the way, my wonderful wife, who through the entire ego trip never told me I was wrong, instead just prayed, sat down beside me the other night on the couch and told me that it didn’t make me any less of a father or husband if I couldn’t afford to do this all by myself. It was a real eye opener that I have finally been faced with something like this in my life and I can’t ‘fix’ it. All I could think was, “this really stinks.” For those of you who haven’t picked up on it yet, I am a 26 year old, very determined (my wife calls it hard headed) prideful person. It isn’t the best trait to have, but it is a difficult one to overcome as well. We actually talked about this in our small group (aka Sunday school class) last night. About the different traits that spouses have, and I said that I was a problem solver – that’s what I do, but I can’t fix this one.

A few days ago a very good friend of mine who has been really just a sounding board for me to lash out at or discuss issues with or just ask to pray for me during this process emailed me this – “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. —1 Peter 5:5-7“ That’s all that was in the email. It wasn’t a – Hey man I’m think about you, or I saw this and thought you might find it helpful – instead it was just the verse, nothing more. I opened it up and a peace just came over me about the entire situation. Then I felt really stupid. Would I really be so prideful that I would not ask for help from people who care about us to bring Zoe home? It isn’t like I am asking them to pay off my house or car, instead I am asking for assistance to travel to go meet and to go bring home my daughter.

So yesterday a couple dozen letters went out in the mail to some people that KC and I have been blessed enough to encounter in our lives asking them to help us raise enough money to bring Zoe home. I did it. It’s done. I have put myself out there. I have stepped outside of that “comfort zone” that we all have heard of so many times in Sunday school and on youth trips growing up. I have shown my underbelly and I am now vulnerable to comments about it or to ridicule from people who may hear about us doing that and not agree with it, but I am okay with that. Tuesday afternoon before we put the letters with my bag so I could carry them to the post office the next morning when I left for work, KC and I called Trey and Abbey who have been such amazing friends, just like the rest of our small group, through this journey, and we asked Trey to pray over the letters for us. They are currently in California because Trey is in school again and he is out there for some classes, but they didn’t hesitate to say yes and do it. So we put KC’s phone on speaker phone, sat it on top of the letters, KC and I held hands and Trey prayed one of the most awesome prayers I have ever heard him say. So we know that something good will come out of this. We have opened ourselves up to God completely. We have let go of everything that we have been holding back and we are putting, not just 95% faith in him and letting us handle the rest, we are putting it all – 100 % - into him and we know he will make things happen.

So if you are out there and this is something that you are dealing with or wondering if it is the right thing to do, trust me, from someone who is a control freak who can’t help but micromanage everything, just let it go and give it ALL to God – you wont regret it.

Update on ZG: We are still patiently waiting for the news of when we will go to court, but we will definitely let everyone know when we finally get it!

Until later – keep the faith.

-j.w. godwin

CONGRATULATIONS!

Congratulations to two of the most amazing people God has ever blessed KC & I to come in contact with – Brad and Rachel Goode who OFFICIALLY passed court today!!! Amelia is FINALLY coming home to her forever family here in Montgomery! We are SO happy for you guys and can’t wait until you are back home and she is here!

Read their story about their news today:
http://rachelgoode.blogspot.com/2011_02_01_archive.html#89088


And please continue to pray for Betsy & Chad as they are in Ethiopia right now on their SECOND trip to go pick up their baby girl - Addison! (http://betsyandtheboys.blogspot.com)

God has been very busy here in our adoption community in Montgomery, we are all so blessed. We still haven't heard anything about our court date/travel date, but we know it will happen when the timing is perfect. We just keep praying it will be sooner than later.

Until next time.

j.w. godwin

OUCH !

First let me start this with the disclaimer that I HATE getting shots. I hate needles more than anything else in the world.

KC & I just finished our first round of shots at the Public Health Department. They were great there. They were asking questions about Zoe, about when we thought we were going to leave, they were asking about Olivia – then the mood changed, very quickly. The sweet nurse turned and walked out of the room telling us that she would be right back. I got extremely nervous, I started to sweat like crazy, I was pretty much freaking out a little bit. We were there to get our first Hep. A & B shot, our Polio shot and our Yellow Fever shot. So I have been doing research on what could happen when you get these shots, and I am always worried that I am going to be that one person out of the 7.3 million that have a reaction to the shots. (1 in 7.3 million is not an accurate statistic; instead it is just a joke.)

Well, as the nurse left the room, I became a little light headed from stressing out, so I had to lay down in KC’s lap before I passed out. Looking back, yeah it was a little funny, but at the moment I was stressing!




Well, the nurse came back in, she asked who wanted to go first, and my wife being the kind hearted, loving woman she is, she volunteered me.








That kind nurse that left the room, came back a vicious medical torturer! She pulled the sleeves up on my shirt, and gave me

one…

two…

three shots, and don’t let the expression on my face fool you – they hurt!


But then everything got better, because it was no longer my turn and it was then KC’s turn. She also started to stress out a little, but I don’t know if it was from the actual shots or from my screaming that she just heard.



She rolled her sleeves up, as I took pictures, and one….

two….

three….

she was done!



Hers hurt a little more afterwards than mine did.


So round one is done, round two will be in a month. So we will update you on that when it happens. We hope you enjoy our pictures, we always enjoy documenting everything, no matter how ridiculous we look.


Until later
-j.w. godwin

Time for the shots!

For those who might be traveling soon….

KC & I posted a blog entry earlier in our process about “shots” and what we needed to get. Well, we have finally gotten around to having enough money to pay for them. (They are expensive!)

I learned some very valuable news yesterday while calling to schedule our appointment(s) for today. When traveling to Ethiopia one of the shots recommended by the CDC (which you can find all of this online on their website, it is very simple) is a Hepatitis A & B shot. Luckily they come in a ‘combo’ shot so you can get them at the same time, but it is three separate shots. So you have to go three different times. The nurse asked me yesterday when we were leaving for our trip, because according to the CDC you have to have a month between the first shot and the second. You can’t have them any closer together. They also told me that they suggest you get two shots before you leave, you obviously aren’t required to get any shots, but recommended. I mean who wants to bring Meningitis or Polio home with them? Not me. But they said as long as you get two rounds of the shots into you, you should be okay, but they obviously suggest going ahead and getting the third during the process, just to make sure.

So I thought I would pass along that information. We were planning on waiting as long as we could before we got the shots, but I am so glad we called and checked. Not that we have any information on when we are traveling, but I would have been pretty upset with myself if we were told we were traveling in two or three weeks, then if we went to get shots and we found this out. So here is some unsolicited advice, I would recommend calling your local travel clinic or doctor to see what their recommendations are and really, when you should start getting them. So you don’t run into any ‘timing’ issues. Just a thought.

Also, I guess it’s a good thing that the Hep. A & B shots are a set of three that way we can spread out the other shots that we are recommended to get and we wont get them all together at once. I am 6’ 3” and weigh, on a good day, about 205, so getting some of these aren’t that big of a deal, but KC on the other hand who is 5’ 4” and weighs about 115 probably couldn’t handle as many shots as I could in one sitting. Some of them are live viruses! So we plan on spreading them out, getting three today, two later, etc.

Well, we go today to get the shots and I will update you all later after it is done. I’ll take pictures too. Really, what the post will probably consist of is how I screamed during every shot and how KC just sat there and made fun of me. She laughs at me every time I have to get a shot and says, “you would have never survived as a women, childbirth is way harder than this.”

(For those of you in Alabama who need shots, we have found that the cheapest place in our area to get them are at the Alabama Department of Public Health as well as the AUM Nursing Clinic in Montgomery – Google them their numbers are on-line.)

Until later –

J.W. Godwin