Thumbs Up!

We are writing this post at around 4:30am on Wednesday, still not fully adjusted to the time difference. No words can truly describe yesterday so I will just give a quick run down of how the day went.

We arrived at the facility at around 9:20am and before we could make it all the way inside, Joshua came running out to meet us with a big hug! There was no hesitation, no fear, just joy to see us and the feeling was mutual! We went inside, gave him a gift that we brought, and spent about an hour playing with him. We then met with the director and went over some information. After that, we played some more with Joshua and his new gift. We then toured the facility and met all of the caregivers. What an amazing group of ladies.

We were told that Joshua would probably need time to adjust to us and may get to leave with us on Thursday or Friday depending on how things went. Well, Joshua wasn’t having any of that, he told his caregiver he was ready to go and so we packed up his stuff and he came with us yesterday! He needed a few things so we decided to go shopping and two of his caregivers volunteered to come with us. It was raining when we got ready to leave and his caregiver commented that Joshua needed a hat. It just so happened that we brought a couple with us for just such an occasion so we stopped by the hotel on the way to get them. As you can see by the picture, they proved to be adequate. We had a fun afternoon at the mall and picked up everything he needed. We had a late lunch there together and then we grabbed a taxi back to the facility to drop off the caregivers and came back to the hotel.

We hung out in the room for a little while getting things situated and realized the room was way too small for the three us and the nerf football that dad just happened to bring with us. We decided to go downstairs to have dinner and then see if there were any larger rooms available. Our first dinner together went well as you can see by the pictures. His main course selection was excellent but the caffeinated drink, not so much. After dinner, we were able to get a larger room and went back upstairs to move our stuff. Joshua was a big help carrying everything to the new room which was just down the hall.

Once we got settled in the new room, Joshua was pretty wound up (again, caffeine was not a good idea) so we broke out the legos and tried out the football in the new space and after a few hours he finally fell asleep. He was exhausted.

Today we plan to go back to the facility and his school for a couple of farewell parties, one with his caregivers and one with his teachers and friends at school. We are glad we got here a few days early as we get to do all of this and not worry about starting on any of the paperwork we have to get done for the embassy until Thursday.

Thanks to everyone for all your prayers. The only way to sum up yesterday is that God is good!