One year ago today....

One year ago today we met and held our son for the first time! We went to the Transition Home with 6 other families (who were also meeting their kids for the first time). This is where Daniel went to live after leaving the orphanage. We lined up in alphabetical order and they brought our kiddos out to meet us. We all took pictures for each other. Here are pictures of our first meetings with Daniel "Fitsum"!
















































The lower pictures are more recent pictures of him... what a difference a year can make!
We are blessed beyond words we have 5 wonderful children with number 6 on the way! We can't begin to put in words how adoption and our Ethiopia journey has touched and changed every member of our family! We can't imagine life without Daniel! He is a true gift from God! Thank you for following our journey and supporting us!

Adoption T-Shirt is here... Get yours now!

Please consider purchasing a T-shirt to help support Tom's mission trip to Ethiopia and to help us bring home our daughter from Ethiopia.
We have completed all of our dossier paperwork. We are waiting on a last CORI check for our finalized Home Study. When we get this we can apply for our fingerprinting which will result in our immigration approval. Once we have this we can submit our dossier. The last two families from our agency, that requested a 4-6 year old girl received their referral in 19 days. Please pray for the rest of these documents so we can bring our daughter home.
We thank you for being a part of this journey with us!

More information to come on the Mission trip.

We want to thank all of our friends, Dwight Chapel, Pioneer Clubs, and Amherst Dental for all the donations for the orphanages in Ethiopia.
Thank you for your support and prayers!

Misson trip to Ethiopia... next month!

November mission trip to Ethiopia
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Thank you all for following our blog. I just received this update from Children's Hopechest, describing the orphanages our group will be visiting in Ethiopia next month. We appreciate your thoughts and prayers as we begin the planning for how to provide much needed support to these organizations.

Tom
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Kind Heart
Ownership: Private
Type: School
Number of Children: 56
Ages: 5 to 9 years of age
Orphanage director: Peshome
Location: Addis Ababa

Kind Heart was established in 1995 and focused on educational and vocational training for children and young adults. In the past they had programs for the hearing impaired, family support, and emergency relief assistance. Today, they are a school for young children (KG1 and 2) where basic education is taught and the children receive one meal a day. The school is located on 40K square meters near a river that is contaminated by a textile plant. About half of the children have to cross this river in order to get to school. The vocational school for students ages 16-18 is still on the property with equipment and supplies, but it is not functional because they cannot afford salaries for teachers. The current needs are food, school supplies, and salaries for the kindergarten teachers, guard, and cook. Capital projects may include a new kitchen and a clean water well. Peshome communicated to us in September 09 that due to the support from Children’s HopeChest, Kind Heart will remain open and continue as a school for younger children. Closing this facility was under consideration until HopeChest provided support.



Hope for the Hopeless Drop-in Center
Ownership: Private
Type: Drop-in center
Number of Children: 15
Ages: 8 years of age and up
Orphanage director: Fekadu Shenuke
Location: Addis Ababa

The Drop-in Center is a short term home. Children are brought by local police or they come on their own because they know it is a safe place where they can wash, get food, and be sheltered. These children have lost their parent due to disease or other circumstances. The Drop In Center also provides spiritual guidance if they want to participate.
Note: Hope fro the Hopeless Drop-in Center is perfect for a group or organization to sponsor corporately. Letter writing and long term discipleship cannot function in the typical manner due to the transitional nature of the orphans.


Kombolcha/ Grace Baptist Church Development Program drop-in center
Ownership: Private/Baptist Church
Type: Drop-in center
Number of Children: aid to 180 children five days a week, area has 400+ in need
Ages: 7 to14 years of age
Orphanage director: Dawit Gebeyehu
Location: Kombolcha, Ethiopia, 375 kilometers north of Addis Ababa

The church located at the central part of the town of Kombolcha, and there are many factories and industries in this area. The government has selected 420 kids in Kombolcha that are in need and “given” to the church to care for. The church is able to provide food once a day for 180 of these children. They did have a donor that provided food for all these children, but the donor is no longer supporting the church. Their needs are food, medical treatment, clothing and schooling. The church currently teaches them about Jesus and character development. It takes the children 20 minutes to get to the church.



Emanuel Orphanage
Ownership: Private
Type: Orphanage/drop in center
Number of Children: 122
Ages: 5 to 15 years of age
Orphanage director: Eyob
Location: Woliso, Ethiopia, one hour’s drive south of Addis Ababa

Currently 45 kids live at this location and an additional 75 children in the community come to the center for medical treatment, food, clothing, education. Many people come to this community because there is a lake and spring water there.



Promising Integrated Action for the Relief of Needy Ethiopia (PIARNE)
Ownership: Privately owned by Mintesinot
Type: Drop in center
Number of Children: 81 children (26 are double orphans; 55 are single orphans)
Ages: 4 to 16 years or age
Orphanage director: Mintesinot
Location: Addis Ababa

Most of the children have lost one or both parents to HIV. Their needs are food, clothing, medical, and education. Currently the property is small with an office that serves as a temporary place to gather. The government recently approved a larger piece of property for the drop in center.

A letter to our friends and family

September 30, 2009

Dear family and friends,

In April of 2006, we made the decision to undertake an international adoption. We learned a lot about faith, God's timing, true love, true need, desperate circumstances, Ethiopia (Africa), and how easy it is to love an orphan. The end result of our adoption from Ethiopia is a very special addition to our family ten months ago – Daniel Fitsum. Many people point out how blessed he is to have us. We respond how blessed we are to have him in our family. We can't thank God enough for how much this journey has changed our lives.

While in Ethiopia we experienced the Ethiopian culture and people; they are wonderful. While there, we also saw the impact of the AIDS crisis, the food shortage, the lack of health care, and poverty unlike most of us have ever seen. Spending time in Ethiopia: around town, the orphanages, transition home, and spending time with our guide, who shared with us what life is like in Ethiopia, fundamentally changed us. We left a piece of our heart in Ethiopia. We came back knowing that we would be going back and that we needed to help in a bigger way.

That brings us to the next phase of our journey.

We have decided to adopt again, and to join with others to identify ways to work in Ethiopia to affect the larger issues faced there. Tom will be traveling on a mission trip from November 29th to December 9. He will be traveling to Addis Ababa where we were last year, and then traveling another three to four hours from the capital city. He is traveling with a group of fellow adoptive parents from our agency, along with Tom Davis with Children's HopeChest Ministries. This is a vision trip to check out seven to eight orphanages and see how they need help; could be a well to give 5,000 people clean water to drink, could be mattresses so the children in the orphanages aren't sleeping on the floor, or even nets to protect the kids from mosquitoes at night. They will be making long term plans and devising ways to build support here in the United States..

There are an estimated 4.8 million orphans in Ethiopia. We are called to take care of the widows and orphans. Most people that adopt want to adopt infants or young toddlers. For this reason, we are requesting an older child. We are requesting a girl between the ages of four and six. We are very excited to see who God has picked for our family.

If you are interested in learning more about Africa, we recommend that you read Scared by Tom Davis or It's Not OK With Me by Janine Maxwell. They are both very difficult books to read, but let you get a glimpse at the life of many in Africa. There Is No Me Without You by Melissa Faye Greene provides a historical perspective that explains some of the reasons the continent has reached its current state of affairs.

We are asking our family and friends to support us on this journey to make a difference. We ask that you prayerfully consider making a donation to help with the expenses of giving a home to an orphan, the mission trip, and the support for the orphanages in Ethiopia. We have created an adoption t-shirt. Anyone making a minimum of a $25 donation will receive a t-shirt as a “Thank You” from our family. The shirts come in adult sizes; small, medium, large, and extra large. Please let us know what size and how many you would like. We will post information about the adoption and the mission trip to our blog (http://laughners.blogspot.com). Most of all we are asking for your prayers as we step out of our comfort zone and away from the safety of the United States.

Please keep our family in your prayers, along with the little girl on the other side of the world that God has chosen to join our family in his time.

We greatly appreciate the role that each of you play in our lives. We are thankful for each and everyone of you! Thank you for being a part of this journey with us.


Tom and Lori Laughner

Adoption T-shirt

We have decided on our adoption t-shirt. What do you think? We have just ordered them and they should be here soon. Let us know if you would be interested in purchasing one.
The text inside the bubble says "adoption" in Amharic!

Daniel just being Daniel

Dinosaur Train

DINOSAUR TRAIN embraces and celebrates the fascination that preschoolers have with both dinosaurs and trains. The series encourages basic scientific thinking and skills as the audience learns about life science, natural history and paleontology. Each of the 40 half-hour episodes features Buddy, an adorable preschool age Tyrannosaurus Rex, and his adoptive Pteranodon family as they board the DINOSAUR TRAIN and embark on whimsical voyages through prehistoric jungles, swamps, volcanoes and oceans. The episodes include two 11-minute animated stories, along with brief live action segments hosted by renowned paleontologist Dr. Scott Sampson, that unearth basic concepts in life science, natural history and paleontology.

Dinosaur Train is Daiel's new favorite show. He is in love with dinosaurs. So there was no surprise when he picked out a dinosaur costume for Halloween.








Daniel is so excited when he gets the dinosaur costume at Target that he has this big dinosaur sitting on his lap in the stroller through the whole mall. His friend dinosaur shares his car seat with him on the ride home. He then wears the costume to watch Dinosaur Train. We end up taking the dinosaur with us to watch Daniel get his hair cut... he is now napping with dinosaur. If you haven't seen the show, check it out!