In Our Arms at Last

We had several flight delays but made it to our flights just in time. We ended up arriving in Addis Ababa at around 9:30 and then waiting in immigration for an hour. Two other families were on flights that landed after ours so we waited an additional 30 minutes for them to get through customs and then took the trip to the hotel.

The hotel is very nice and comfortable and we got to bed around 1:30 in the morning exhausted from our trip.















Today was a very long day beginning at 5 am when the Muslim call to prayer woke us from our 4 hour slumber. John rolled over and went back to sleep, I could not so I just layed there thinking about meeting our baby boy. We went to breakfast and then just killed time in the hotel room until we were ready to eat lunch and meet Almaz the orphanage director to go over paperwork. The paperwork took almost three hours and then we were off to the orphanage.




We opted to walk instead of have the van come pick us back up so we got to see some of the surrounding city on our way.

When we arrived at the orphanage we got to meet him right away. He was very happy and had no problem coming to us. He has so much hair and is adorable. His special mothers kept stealing him back from us to make him giggle and cuddle him. We could tell they were very attached to him and will miss having him as one of the babies in the boys room. The children are taken such good care of and loved on at Hannah's Hope. Almaz knows them all by name and the special mothers love on each child and know their likes and dislikes. You can tell from the minute that you walk in that they are taken good care of.













We were at the orphanage for about an hour and then got in the van to ride back to the hotel. This is when our little man looked around and started screaming. Big crocodile tears streamed down his face as he looked around at his unfamiliar surroundings. We got back to the hotel and tried every trick we knew to get him to stop crying. He cried for about an hour then John finally got him to fall asleep. He slept for 45 minutes and was up for a half hour playing, took a bottle and fell back to sleep pretty easily. He is sleeping very soundly now so we will see how the rest of the night goes.







He is everything we imaged and more! Gotta go get some sleep! Long day at the Embassy tomorrow.......

(The internet works in our room so we are able to email and everything seems to work except for the blog site..Alisa is updating this for me through emails I send her....Thanks Alisa!)

John and Sarah made it!

Email from Sarah:
"We are here safe and sound. We will be meeting Johnny at 2pm Addis time so 6am US Eastern Time."

Sarah's 30th Birthday + Send off at the airport

John, Sarah and Emma at Sarah's 30th birthday dinner.







They waived the fees! All three bins got through!




























Giving instructions to Emma on how to take care of her YaYa and Papee while Mom and Dad are gone

We are on our way!!

We are in the airport in greensboro waiting to take off. The guy that checked us in ignored the extra weight and all the donations made it without added fees. We ended up with 170 pounds and 200 dollars in cash to donate for supplies at the orphanage!

We fly from here to dc then to germany then to ethiopia. 24 hours total and will get johnny on sunday.

We are so excited!!!

Airport Arrival

If anyone is interested in meeting Johnny on his first day home we would love it if you came out to the airport when we arrived!

We will be flying into the Greensboro Airport on United Flight 7986 on Friday January 15th at 6:04 PM.

We would like to have a quite moment with Emma and grandparents when we first arrive in Greensboro so we are asking that anyone that wants to greet us at the airport meet at baggage claim downstairs so Emma can be waiting upstairs and can then introduce you all to her baby brother. We are so excited to introduce our son to you all!

If there are flight delays we will try to have it posted on the blog so check the blog before you head to the airport.

Article in the News and Record (Front Page!)

Family takes journey of adoption

Sunday, January 3, 2010

(Updated 5:02 am)

By Jennifer Fernandez Staff Writer

GREENSBORO — This is the story of a family.

John and Sarah Pell arrived in Greensboro in 2005 . He came to study for his master’s degree in English at UNCG; Sarah started working part-time as a certified public accountant.
Two years later , Sarah gave birth to bubbly, blond-haired Emma .

But they realized their family wasn’t complete. So began their journey to adopt — a journey that will end Jan. 15 when they return from Ethiopia with 6-month-old Johnny Tibebu Pell.
Building a family

“What does it mean that love can so drastically change you that you can’t imagine your family being complete without a person you have never met that lives on the other side of the world?”
John Pell posed that question in January 2009 on the blog, http://thestoryofafamily.blogspot.com/, that he and Sarah started to chronicle the adoption of their child from another country.
“It was a way of saying, let’s make our story — our family — about inspiring and encouraging (others),” he said in an interview.

The day-to-day writing of “The Story of a Family” on the blog became a part of Sarah Pell’s coping mechanism to get through the adoption process. Online, she met families in various stages of adoption. They helped each other survive the disappointments and celebrate the good news, she said.

“It was just so great to have someone who knew what we were going through,” she said. “That’s been a great advantage to the blog that I hadn’t expected.”

The Pells are among an increasingly smaller number of American families adopting outside the United States.

Foreign adoptions have declined since 2004. That year, Tar Heel families adopted 610 children from other countries. That compares with 413 last fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, according to the State Department .

Nationally, 22,990 children were adopted in 2004. That dropped to 12,753 in 2009.
Many countries are tightening rules on who can adopt and be adopted, said Diane Kunz , executive director of the New York-based Center on Adoption Policy. Many have long waits, sometimes years before an adoption is finalized. Some, such as Guatemala, have closed new adoptions.

Then there are countries such as Ethiopia, which has a wait time of a year, sometimes less, Kunz said.

Adoptions from celebrity parents, such as actress Angelina Jolie , along with more awareness of that country’s plight, have raised interest in adoptions there, she said.

By comparison, adoptions from the U.S. foster care system have seen the first increase in several years, said Joe Kroll, executive director of the North American Council on Adoptable Children.

About 55,000 foster children were adopted in 2008, up from about 50,000 annually for each of the past several years, Kroll said.

The Pells considered adopting locally, but wanted Emma to be the oldest child and didn’t feel they were prepared to raise an older child.

Most children adopted from foster care are older; children in foreign adoptions tend to be 2 years old or younger, Kroll said.

The journey

“It’s been something that’s been in our hearts,” Sarah Pell said of choosing to adopt. “We both just feel like every child should live in a family that loves and supports them.”

John and Sarah started the process with the All God’s Children International agency last January . They learned May 15 that they had been approved for adoption and placed on a waiting list. On Aug. 11, they received word that a 1-month-old boy, Tibebu, would be theirs if the adoption was finalized through the Ethiopian courts.

They thought he’d be home in time for Thanksgiving, but a paperwork mishap derailed those plans.

And he wouldn’t make it home in time for Christmas, either.

“I have been overwhelmed with feelings of dissapointment (sic) and sadness,” Sarah Pell wrote on the blog Nov. 25 . “Our baby boy will be spending his first Christmas in an orphanage due to a piece of paper not getting to where it needed to go.”
Two weeks later, she wrote, success at last.
“We were approved and passed court last night! Thank you so much for all of your encouragement and prayers. I am once again breathing a sigh of relief.”
“It’s a roller-coaster ride. It definitely is,” she said in an interview.

When John, 30, and Sarah, 29, fly out Friday, to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, they’ll take with them 175 pounds of donated clothing and baby formula for the orphanage where their son is staying.

They talk to Emma about Johnny, explaining as best they can how the newest member of the family will arrive.

“She understands it better than we thought she would,” Sarah Pell said.
When they put up the Christmas tree, Emma stood back to look over the scene.
“Mommy, it’s perfect,” she said. “Baby brother like this ... he be happy.”
A present that Emma wrapped awaits Johnny’s arrival on Jan. 15.

Which will end this chapter in the story of the Pells, now a family of four.

Contact Jennifer Fernandez at 373-7064 or jennifer.fernandez@news-record.com

All Packed

I have never been so ahead with packing than I have been for our trip to Ethiopia. Johnny's clothes were packed last weekend and ours got packed today. Lists have been made and checked off and even the things on my list that didn't have to be done have been done. Our calendars had pretty much been cleared off with any long term plans since the end of November so the holidays have been pretty laid back leaving us lots of time to get ready.

We are ready!!!

This week John and I have both been really trying to take advantage of these last weeks that we have as a family of four. We will miss our little girl so much as the longest we have been apart is two nights. Her Yaya and Pappy are coming out to stay with her so she will be fine but we know it will be really hard to leave her behind when we leave on Friday. The reunion at the airport when we return will be a sweet one for us all.