After being cleared last week, we picked an interview date of 9-24-12 and booked our tickets for Ethiopia. We arrived here on Sunday morning to Addis after two days worth of flying. We settled our room at the guest house we were staying at, and then the agency told us we could go and get our little Joshua that day and bring him to stay with us from then on at the guest house! YEA!!!! The moment we were waiting for had finally arrived… our Gotcha Day. We picked him up and took our smiling little guy to the guest house. We were concerned he would cry that first night because he missed his familiar nannies, friends, and surroundings, but that night, after Mommy gave him his bottle and we fed him, he laid down and went right to sleep in his crib. Also amazingly, he slept all the way through the night very soundly! Joshua truly is exactly as the doctor at the transition home described him. When we were there in July for our court date, we had an appointment then with the doctor. She called Joshua a perfect little gentleman, and said he would change the world! This dad and mom love that! Amen to that!

The next day at 9:00AM we entered the US Embassy and waited for our name to be called and wondering what the interview would be like and what questions they would ask. Once we were called to one of the numbered windows there, the whole interview was over faster than we expected, and then he told us to have someone from the agency come on Wednesday and pick up our visa and sealed immigration envelope. Hallelujah! Joshua Battle was now ours in the eyes of both Ethiopia and the USA! Hallelujah! Tomorrow we will receive the papers Joshua needs to enter the USA on our trip home and to instantly become a citizen of the USA upon entry,

We look in that crib in our room here in Ethiopia now and we can hardly believe our eyes. That little blessing from heaven laying in that crib is finally here and he is all ours! After such a long journey, it’s almost very hard to believe it’s true! Thank you Lord for blessing us with such a wonderful and amazing gift! It’s going to be such a joy to watch him grow into the man God created him to be and as the doctor here in Ethiopia said: Joshua will someday change the world! God has used him already to change our world, and his little life has already touched and blessed so many as we walked this second journey of adoption. We will leave Ethiopia on Friday night, and arrive in the states around 5:00PM on Saturday night. We so look forward to being home again and letting Joshua meet his big sister face to face and his new grandparents too for the first time! Thanks everyone for all of your prayers and kind notes and gifts! They mean so much to us! Thanks again! We will post again soon!