Camp

I wasn’t kidding – this is like camp.  We have a weekly set schedule.  We have meals together – some good Ethiopian food, some typical carb camp food.  We load on the bus and off the bus.  We share a bathroom.  We complain about some activities and love others.   Sometimes the noise and the people are just too much!  Whatever the camp you have been to over the years, the memories you have most of camp are the other campers!  Mostly, you go to camp relatively alone, and you leave bonded with others because of the mutual experiences you shared together.   

But,  in my sarcasm before the trip, I showed Jeeva a list of the campers’ names and I said, “Here’s a list of your eight new best friends.”  We both laughed and acted as if we didn’t need new friends, we had each other, and we would just hole up in our room on the down times.  We even brought DVD’s to watch in our room.   This trip with no kids was going to be our second honeymoon!  

Although Jeeva and I have had a beautiful time together,  I was wrong about not needing community.

  

“Going to get your baby camp” isn’t much different than all the other camps.   In this case the mutual experience is birthing a child into our family.  We waited those first hours together to meet our children for the first time.  We celebrated together when we came down the stairs with our new child, some became parents for the very first time.   We grieved each other’s birth stories, and we wept together for our child’s past.  We passed many hours on the buses just sharing about our lives.  For three of the families, it was their second Ethiopian adoption.  So, Jeeva and I learned much from them, and gained so much hope for the future.   For some families it was their first adoption, so we experienced the newness  together.  For all of us, we were adding a child to our family, and this was an unspoken, long-awaited, miracle and blessing.    As the crying and chaos of the bedtime hour hit tonight, and we were all cleaning up very dirty diapers, vomit, snot, and all the other things associated with leaving the orphanage and entering our care, it felt good, once again, to be in community.

Life is better in community.  We could do this alone, but it would not be as full, as rich, or as wise to do it that way.