We have held our angel...and she hugged us back!

It has been an amazing and blessed day for Barry and I. We had no idea what to expect when we left for the orphanage this morning. We didn't know if Tabbi would be clean, if the orphanage would be in shambles, if she was loved by her care givers, if she would like us or be scared of us, if she would even acknowledge us. We hoped for the best but prepared ourselves for the worst. I am completely humbled in saying that we have the greatest group of prayer warriors behind us and we serve an awesome God of miracles and wonders who is going before us. While Tabbi's orphanage is old and run down like many buildings in Sofia built during the time of communism, it is clean and warm, she is well cared for, well fed and appears to be loved. We were thrilled to see her clean, WALKING ON HER OWN and ready to play. Within minutes she warmed up to us as we engaged her. She loves her new baby Einstein book that plays music and she likes to dance very much. She also enjoyed looking through the photo book we made for her and she is pretty intrigued by the photo of her big brothers. She was fairly happy with her new Easter lamb but she is still much more interested in playing ball...lol. Her favorite new things today were the balloons, seeing them blown up is ok but having all the air blow back out in her face was obviously the most fun! Mine and Barry's greatest joy was her crawling into our laps completely on her own, giving us hugs and letting us hug her back. Holding your child for the first time is always an unexplainable joy but they rarely hug you back that first time!

Barry and I are beginning to learn our way around Sofia. It is very different from home in many ways but also very much the same. We have diet coke and Pringles and Subway for dinner so it can't be all that bad! The language is VERY different so we are very blessed that so many folks speak pretty good English. Maybe before we leave we will learn the Bulgarian words for "thank you" so Barry can stop telling everyone "gracious"!

We can not thank you all enough for the prayers you have continued to lift up on our behalf....we feel them and know God is at work in all of this. Our latest request is that you would pray our I-800 paper work would be approved by the US very quickly so her court date can be set before the end of June and we can bring her home before the government takes their holiday off in August. Thank you all again so much. We love you and we miss you but we are treasuring our time with baby sister.