The crib's up!

Yep, the mess finally got cleaned up, everything got put back together from yesterday, and the crib is officially up and ready! Waiting for Hanna are "Hope" the bear the kids made and a super-soft stuffed bear/blanket from the shower last night. Now all we need is that baby!!!

Oh What a Night!

Yesterday was indescribable, but we'll do our best to try...

Jerry had originally wanted to go shopping in the afternoon for all the stuff we'll need for our trip, but I hadn't had time to get the entire list together, so we decided to go ahead and move the furniture around in our room and put the crib up. We decided we'd start at 2pm. When I went up, Jerry was on the phone in the office, so I started clearing out the room and moving little things and cleaning and stuff in our room. After a while, he yelled over, "We got it." I yelled back, "Got what?" I had NO idea what he was talking about. It took him a while...maybe even several minutes...before he finally told me that what "we got" was Hanna's birth certificate!!!! I wasn't even expecting it because we were only 2.5 weeks into a quoted 3-4 week wait.

Well, I rushed over to see her new picture (leaving our room torn apart and the bathroom and hallway full of stuff from our room). My how she's changed!!! And there it was...the official paper stating that Gerald Shannon and Christy Shannon were parents of Hanna Gerald Shannon. (Yep, after much question and discrepancies on her paper work, her name is spelled with 2 n's instead of 1 n.) Wow. I can't begin to express what went on in my heart. (and yes, we'll change her name back when we finalize her adoption in the US) The only other information we got was that we would get a travel date next week.

Jerry immediately emailed our specialist to tell her we were pretty flexible in our ability to travel (and to let her know the week we were scheduled to be at the beach in Sept.). She emailed back and said we were tentatively in the Sept 4 travel group, and could we make that work. Jerry had joked about being in that group, because it means we land back in the US Friday morning and would leave Sat. morning for our yearly family vacation to the beach. (I told him he obviously wasn't the one packing!) So, when he got the reply, he yelled down the steps, "Can we make it work?!?" The answer was an immediate, " YEP!!!" Funny how perspective changes the way you look at things. The only other option would be to wait until October. Suddenly, it seems like a PERFECT time to travel! :)

Our specialist Jan emailed back that we could go ahead and put tickets on hold for the Sept 4 group, but that she would let us know at the end of next week or the beginning of the following week if there was any space in an earlier travel group.

Then it was off to contact Grandma and a travel agent. And the whole day was turned on it's ear. Jerry eventually ran off to a meeting, and I got ready to host a bonfire for folks from the church (a monthly summer occurrence). The crib would have to wait.

It was so fun to have friends to share the news with and to show off Hanna's new picture to. Then, later in the evening, someone came into the kitchen and said they needed everyone out around the fire. As we were coming out, I saw lots of people walking out towards their car, and wondered "hmmmm?", but had no clue what was up. When people started walking back with gift bags with teddy bears and booties and such on them, I started to get fishy. Then Darice walked up carrying a big, beautiful cake with Hanna's picture on it that said "Thank you God for Hanna Tessema Shannon"! Rip then gave the explanation...they had been trying to figure out how and when to have a baby shower for us, and finally decided to hijack the bonfire (since they knew we'd be home) and have the shower there. We were totally surprised.

Could the timing have been any more perfect?!? What a way to celebrate the last step of paperwork in this long journey!!! (They claim they have a connection in the Ethiopian government and arranged for us to receive the BC today, but we doubt that they are THAT good!) What a way to celebrate the end that is now in sight...with diapers (YEHAW!!! I never thought I'd be excited over more diapers!) and wipes and little pink socks and awesome baby board books and sweet little girly tops and soft little cuddly bears and and stars to hang in her room and even a dear little pink flowered outfit that had caught both Jerry & my eyes the one and only time we went looking at baby things. The generosity was a bit overwhelming...even as I had fretted a bit today thinking about finishing up the shopping list for the trip and needing to shop. Not only did we get some of the stuff on that list, but we were so blessed with gift cards and gifts that will more than cover getting what we need to bring our little Hanna home. God is so good and generous...and His people are so amazing to be willing to be a part of it all. I am blessed and overwhelmed.

The other really fun thing was to watch how excited our kids were. They were so full of joy to help open diapers! They are SO excited!!! It still amazes me how deep their love is for her.

The night ended with a beautiful fireworks display just down the street! Go figure...fireworks in Creswell!!! (Someone said they thought they were for the wedding taking place down the street, but I think they were for Hanna ;)! ) What a perfect expression of what I'm feeling in my heart!

That Deer in Headlights sort of look

Here's Hanna's photo from her birth certificate. Resembles some of those drivers license photos I've had in the past =). It looks like she has grown like crazy and she's got hair! Man, has this little girl gripped our hearts. I can't wait to meet her and hold her!

YOOO HOOO! Hanna's Birth Certificate has arrived!!

We just received word 20 minutes ago that Hanna's birth certificate has arrived and it is all correct. That is such amazing news for us, because now that means we can travel and get her! Wow...we're stunned. We are only 2 1/2 weeks into the typical 4 week wait for a Birth Certificate!

Jerry has been driving Christy nuts as he refreshed the email every 5 minutes, so now he doesn't have to do that anymore :).

Sounds like we are tentatively traveling the week of September 1st which will be amazing, since we'll get back just in time for family vacation at the beach.

Thanks for your prayers...now we've got about 4 weeks to get packed and we'll be there!

It's Official!!! Hanna is ours!!

We got an email very late Monday night from our specialist that Hanna's case made it through court on Monday (July 7) and we are now officially her guardians!! It is so wonderful. We got the news while we have been away at the Eastern Regional Conference for The Vineyard. Wow, its so great to have all these folks around us that we can share this news with!

What happens next is that the court documents get typed up, a new birth certificate gets drafted and we are assigned a court date. It takes approximately 4 weeks for that documentation to happen and then we'll travel 3 - 4 weeks after that. Its becoming more and more real all of the time.

Now that we're officially Hanna's parents we can post her picture. So, may I introduce you to Hanna Tessema - (this picture was taken late May).

Plumpy'Nut??

We've had a number of posts recently about drought and famine and the problems many Ethiopians are facing in the midst of malnutrition. It leaves parents in difficult situations of how to care for children as well as seeing their children in need, but not needy enough to get the help they need. With these situations comes a lot of helplessness. What if there was something that could alleviate some of the pain and distress for these folks.

That's where Plumpy-Nut comes in. It has been getting a lot of press over the past year. It is a remarkable product with 500 calories of fortified peanut butter, milk, vitamins and minerals. It becomes a true life saver in cases of malnutrition. Not only does it sound promising, it also is getting results. Michael Wines wrote an article in the NY Times last August 8th and he quoted Idrissa, a 24 year old mother of a 2 year old as saying, "As soon as I got him home, he started eating it - every day, aggressively. And after three days, I could see a big difference. The change was abrupt."

It has a shelf-life of 2 years and is being distributed by Doctors Without Borders. And, there's even better news...for a 4 week treatment the price tag is $20. Twenty bucks? For a very minimal portion of the world food budget a difference could be made.

Here is the text of a recent 60 minutes episode with Anderson Cooper reporting... There also is a link for the 60 minutes broadcast here:

http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=4201082n

A Life Saver Called "Plumpynut"

June 22, 2008

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(CBS) This segment was originally broadcast on Oct. 21, 2007. It was updated on June 20, 2008.

You've probably never heard a good news story about malnutrition, but you’re about to. Every year, malnutrition kills five million children - that's one child every six seconds. But now, the Nobel Prize-winning relief group "Doctors Without Borders" says it finally has something that can save millions of these children.

It's cheap, easy to make, and even easier to use. What is this miraculous cure? As CNN's Anderson Cooper

reports, it's a ready-to-eat, vitamin-enriched concoction called "Plumpynut," an unusual name for a food that may just be the most important advance ever to cure and prevent malnutrition.

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"It's a revolution in nutritional affairs," says Dr. Milton Tectonidis, the chief nutritionist for Doctors Without Borders.

"Now we have something. It is like an essential medicine. In three weeks, we can cure a kid that is looked like they're half dead. We can cure them just like an antibiotic. It’s just, boom! It's a spectacular response," Dr. Tectonidis says.

"It's the equivalent of penicillin, you’re saying?" Cooper asks.

"For these kids, for sure," the doctor says.

No kids need it more than a group of children 60 Minutes saw in Niger, a desperately poor country in West Africa, where child malnutrition is so widespread that most mothers have watched at least one of their children die.

Why are so many kids dying? Because they can't get the milk, vitamins and minerals their young bodies need. Mothers in these villages can't produce enough milk themselves and can't afford to buy it. Even if they could, they can't store it -- there’s no electricity, so no refrigeration. Powdered milk is useless because most villagers don't have clean water. Plumpynut was designed to overcome all these obstacles.

Plumpynut is a remarkably simple concoction: it is basically made of peanut butter, powdered milk, powdered sugar, and enriched with vitamins and minerals. It tastes like a peanut butter paste. It is very sweet, and because of that kids cannot get enough of it.

The formula was developed by a nutritionist. It doesn't need refrigeration, water, or cooking; mothers simply squeeze out the paste. Many children can even feed themselves. Each serving is the equivalent of a glass of milk and a multivitamin.

To see the impact it's having, 60 Minutes drove for 12 hours from Niger's capital to a remote village, where every week Doctors Without Borders hand out Plumpynut. After sleeping in a field under mosquito nets, Cooper and the team awoke at sunrise to find mothers emerging from the fields. Many had walked for hours in the dark, along treacherous paths, avoiding scorpions, spiders and poisonous snakes.

Rivers of women flowed into the site and within minutes there were more than a thousand of them, all waiting to get packets or tubs of Plumpynut. In a land where plastic bags are a luxury, they carry the food home in their scarves, their hands, or simply stacked on top of their heads.

"When you see some of these kids they don’t look sick. They don’t look malnourished. They don’t have bloated bellies or little stick arms," Cooper remarks.

"The ones that we're used to seeing on TV, that’s the worst of the worst of the worst. It's the tip of the iceberg. And then below that, there’s the iceberg. So, there's a whole spectrum of malnutrition," Dr. Tectonidis says. "And when we go and check these kids, well, they’re way off in height or in weight. They’re way off."

Niger has become Plumpynut's proving ground. A daily dose costs about $1; small factories mix it here and in three other African countries. Tectonidis says other companies could make similar products wherever children need them.

"There's many countries in Africa now saying, 'We want a factory. We want a factory.' Well let's give it to them," he says. "We just have to focus on these areas. We don’t have to feed the whole world. We have to go for the jugular. Where are they dying? Where are they wasted? That’s where we have to intervene. If you feed them well until they're two or three years old it's won. They're healthy, they can get a healthy life. If you miss that window, it's finished."

In Niger, most children need help now during what’s called the "hunger season," just before the new harvest. Old food supplies have run out and about all that’s left is millet, a basic grain women pound for porridge. But millet doesn’t have enough nutrients to keep kids alive; in America we use it as birdseed.

Normally a children's hospital 60 Minutes visited would have more patients than beds. But now, thanks to Plumpynut, it has empty beds. Dr. Susan Shepherd, a pediatrician from Butte, Mont., runs Doctors Without Borders in Niger.

She says children that would have been hospitalized in the past can now be treated at home. "The reason we can do that is because we can give children Plumpynut here in the ambulatory center, and they take a week’s ration home. Moms treat their children at home and come back every week for a weight check," Dr. Shepherd explains.

That's what Sahia Ibrahim has been doing. She’s already lost four children to malnutrition. Now her six-month-old twins, Hassana and Husseina, are malnourished and she’s worried they might die too. So she’s been coming to the hospital for Plumpynut.

Hassana, at six months old, weighs only seven pounds. While that's what a newborn should weigh, the little girl has put on a pound in just a week thanks to Plumpynut.

Children are weighed and measured at the distribution sites. They're also examined to make sure they don't have any serious infections. Malnutrition destroys a child's immune system, so they're more susceptible to diseases and less capable of recovering from them.

"Often these kids aren't even hungry. It's the opposite. They are anorexic because of the deficiencies they have. They lose their appetite," Tectonidis explains.

That's what happened to Mansour Miko and Maroufee Mazoo. Less than a year old, they had stopped eating and became listless and weak -- so weak that when their mothers brought them to get Plumpynut, the nurse put them in a van and sent them straight to the hospital. Three days later however, they were smacking their lips on Plumpynut, almost ready to go home.

"Have you seen kids who were on the brink of death brought back by Plumpynut?" Cooper asks.

"Oh, yeah, for sure. Again and again and again and again," Dr.Shepherd says.

But not always. Sometimes parents wait too long before bringing their child to doctors. 60 Minutes found Rashida Mahmadou in intensive care, barely clinging to life.

Rashida's condition was very serious. Her skin was literally peeling away -- one side effect of malnutrition, as skin becomes thin, pliable, cracks easily, and bacteria invade.

Just two hours later, Rashida's little heart stopped beating. She was just 19 months old.

"She died of severe, acute malnutrition," says Shepherd, who says she sees this happening every day.

Asked how she deals with so many kids dying, Shepherd tells Cooper, "It breaks your heart. It can break your spirit. It can ruin your confidence in your ability to be a good doctor. And it is sad. And I carry memories of many, many children with me and I'll carry them with me for my entire life. But you certainly cannot indulge yourself in that kind of sadness. We need to do something about this."

If Plumpynut is the answer, how come kids are still dying?

"The answer is getting to kids earlier," Shepherd says. "Once children are as sick as she is, Plumpynut is not gonna save her."

Rashida was buried in a nearby cemetery, where the grave digger told 60 Minutes he is burying fewer children than he used to.

Two years ago this region had the highest malnutrition rate in Niger. But now, after widespread use of the Plumpynut, it has the lowest. Dr. Shepherd told Cooper they’ll be able to treat more than 120,000 kids this year, up from just 10,000 children three years ago.

What about peanut allergies?

"We just don't see it," Shepherd says. "In developing countries food allergy is not nearly the problem that it is in industrialized countries.

It's hard to imagine a less industrialized country than Niger. On a list of 177 developing countries, the United Nations ranked Niger dead last -- least developed. More than 70 percent of the people don’t know how to read. Most work in the fields and earn less than a dollar a day. Nomadic goat herders still roam this land -- their children and their kids travel by camel. Goats seem to be the main garbage disposal, but clearly the goats are falling behind. You can still spot a skinny guard dog, but we were told all the cats have been cooked.

In the countryside, where 85 percent of people live, girls start marrying as young as 11 years old. By the age of 15 most are wed, and by 16 most have already become mothers. The average woman here will give birth at least eight times in her lifetime. But largely because of malnutrition, one in five of their children will die before they reach the age of five. Of those who survive, half will have stunted growth and never reach full adult height.

But now, with Plumpynut, more children are surviving and thriving.

"And kids are doing better. Moms say their child's skin is brighter. Their appetites are better. And they’re less sick. You know, what more could you ask for," Shepherd remarks.

Doctors Without Borders is asking for more of this type of food. Their success in Niger proves, they say, that fortified ready-to-eat products, like Plumpynut, save children's lives. Dr. Tectonidis says if the United States and the European Union were willing to spend part of their food aid on this, more companies will start making it.

"Even by taking a miniscule proportion of the global food aid budget, they will have a huge impact, huge impact!" Tectonidis says. "We're not even asking for billions. It will solve so much of the underlying useless death. So we gotta do that now."

"It's useless death," Cooper remarks.

"Wasted life. Just totally wasted life for nothing. Because they don't have this product, little a bit of peanut butter with vitamins," Tectonidis says. "What a waste."

Produced By Robert Anderson and Casey Morgan
© MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

She's growing again!

Great news! We got an update on Hanna today and she has almost reached the weight she arrived into the orphanage at. She had lost some weight as of the last update we got. So, she is now almost 14 lbs and is 25.5 inches long. She's a little peanut. Praise God!

Heartsick

Don't just read the news...imagine yourself in their shoes. How about being the doctor with lifesaving food standing at the scales with hundreds of hungry mothers and children lined up to see you, only to have to be the one to tell the mother in front of you that her limp, bony little starving child isn't bad enough today to receive help...to come back when she's worse. How about being that mother watching your child waste away before your very eyes and being absolutely helpless, resourceless, totally unable to do anything about it.

This news story is about the area that Hanna is from:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0627/p01s08-woaf.html

From another article abut UNICEF providing aid:
"This is still short of the 75,000 children classed as severely malnourished in southern and eastern Ethiopia, where the next major harvest is not expected until at least September."

Hanna is from southern Ethiopia. Hanna's extended family is still living in southern Ethiopia.

This is from back at the beginning of June:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/world/africa/7444753.stm

And here are some photos from a photojournalist. They are very intense.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/06/ethiopia_in_food_crisis_once_m.html


Dear friends of our just lost their 4 year old son in an accident. I have heard a mother wail in intense grief for her lost child. What must the collective sound be that is coming from Ethiopia into God's ears? Can you hear it too?

see the previous post on what you can do...