Saturday, January 08, 2011

Kessler's First Year

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Moses Is Coming Home

Our friends, Abby and Daniel Umlauf, announced in September 2008 that they were going to adopt a little boy from Ethiopia. After a painstaking 13-month wait for a referral, they finally got pictures of their little boy. They named him Moses.

Five months later, over a year and a half after they began the process, they were informed the region where Moses is from was closed to adoption and they would not be able to adopt the boy they'd thought of as their son. The same day, they got a call that another referral came in for a boy in another region which was open for adoption. In one day they felt like they lost one son, but gained another. The second boy is Asher, who was finally able to come home this past August, nearly 2 years after the Umlaufs started the process.

A few days ago, they got word their first son, Moses, had miraculously become available for adoption. And they're going for it. He is their son, after all. After working tirelessly to save and do fundraisers with the help of committed friends to raise the $20,000 or so needed for their first adoption, they now have 1 month to raise about $14,000 to bring home their 16-month old son.

Please consider a tax-deductible donation to help bring Moses home. The details are on their blog:

http://comehomemoses.blogspot.com/

This is Asher, followed by the story of how they decided on the name Moses:



Told by Abby at the time they decided to adopt: 
Three years ago, I told Daniel that I loved the name Moses. He quickly told me "no way."
This summer Daniel was reading the Old Testament and read that Moses was the only prophet that met God face to face. He got a little more excited about the name.

The next day I listened to a John Piper sermon on adoption and realized Moses was one of the three adopted children in the OT.

I looked up what Moses meant and read "saved" "pulled from the water" "adopted." I emailed Daniel at work to tell him that and he said "well I guess we will have an Ethiopian son named Moses."

Two weeks later, I went out to eat with my grandparents and asked them their parents and grandparent's names. My gaga who is a special person in my life said his grandfather's name was Moses. That was it, we were meant to have a son named Moses!!!