Home Sweet Home

We made it home! Praise the Lord! We had a very looong past 2 days. About 40 straight hours total of traveling and layovers. Béni did great! He was quite excited to ride on a plane and go to America with us. He had a few moments of sadness/impatience while waiting to board the planes. Before boarding the first plane in the Congo, the Lord blessed us to meet a young Congolese guy who spoke fluent English and Lingala. He was able to speak to Béni and translate a lot of Béni’s questions. Even more of a blessing, this same guy happened to be sitting on the same row across the aisle from us on the plane. Béni sat by him briefly carrying on a lengthy conversation and had a good time! The Lord truly ordained this meeting.


I have to share a humorous incident from the airport yesterday. Turns out Béni is terrified of automatic flushing toilets. He went in the restroom to do his business and during the process the toilet flushed on him. Apparently (according to Brady) he screamed and ran out (pants around his ankles) for all to see in the crowded airport restroom. He had to work up his courage to go back in and complete his task.

We were also grateful for our facilitator/translator while in the DRC. Our paperwork was done in record time! Even though we couldn’t get home earlier than scheduled, the time we had with Béni in country was a great opportunity to begin bonding and adjusting. Our facilitator left us this wonderful/amazing advice. He said “It is a beautiful thing what you are doing…adopting Béni. You are giving him a better life. But it will only be temporarily better if you do not teach him about the gospel and about Christ. That is all that matters.” How awesome is that!

We’ve been home about 15 hours and things are going smoothly. Béni slept peacefully in his bed (in a shared room with Manny) all night. He LOVES Manny and Manny loves him. He was a little sad at first when Manny headed off to school this morning. But he recovered. Shockingly, Béni also LOVES the dogs; which is an awesome surprise! Béni is fascinated with everything; particularly the car. The first thing he did this morning was walk out to the garage and mumble something while gently petting the car. Even now he just keeps walking out to the garage and touching the car. He keeps asking for the keys, thinking he’s just gonna hop in and drive somewhere! Sorry pal!

That’s all for now! I’m sure we’ll have more humorous stories soon!