When Dave and I got married nine years ago we thought that our family was complete. I had three children (a son and two daughters) and Dave had two daughters. Then 6 years into the marriage I wanted another baby. Since I was a little girl I had always wanted to adopt, so I thought this was my chance to do it!
We looked into adoption but didn’t proceed until 2 years later (2007). We looked into all of the countries and programs out there and signed up with an agency. Unfortunately that didn’t work out and the program stopped. Instead of beating ourselves up, we started researching other agencies and saw that Ethiopia was open to adoption and thought that it was the perfect place to adopt from. The Ethiopian people are gorgeous, and the nicest people in the world.
I started researching agencies, spending days on the computer, and heard about Hope Adoption Agency. Remember, we had a bad experience before. So I called the number and reached Shimeliss. He was in Washington, D.C. on his way back from Ethiopia and was very nice and told me he had to catch his flight but he would call me the next morning.
The next morning he called me and we jumped in, and 2 months later we got the referral of our beautiful little girl. She was just 21 days old. It was Christmas Eve and it was the best Christmas ever. During the wait for our court date Shimeliss and Grace gave us updates, and other traveling families took a lot of pictures of her. We have a lot of pictures for her Lifebook.
We traveled to pick her up in May 2008. It was the most amazing trip. Going to Ethiopia to meet our baby for the first time was so amazing. It was perfect. She was 5 months old. We loved her so much already. We spent some quality times with just the three of us -bonding and just watching her sleep. It was amazing and I will never forget it. Our other children are just as much in love with her. We named her Ava Rose Edilawit. Edilawit is her Ethiopian name and it means “Lucky One”, but we are the lucky ones. She is a blessing and we could not be happier.
Thank you Hope Adoption Agency. Thank You for taking good care of her in Ethiopia and thank you for letting us be her parents. We will be forever grateful and you are part of our family forever.
David and Christine Martel, NH
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