the 2nd part to the story

Sorry it has taking so long to get the 2nd part of the story up here. The third and final part should be up here within the next day. Enjoy :))

The missionary to Ethiopia at the Sunday service at their church that September night humbled both Nicholas and Stephanie’s spirits with the life story and pictures of a little boy named Berihun, a five year old who asked for the love of parents. The love he didn’t know personally, but the love his grandmother had told him he deserved the day she dropped him off at the orphanage.
There were a lot of kids in the pictures of the slideshow, but there was this one little girl that seemed to be in every one of them. The little girl brightened up every picture she appeared in. It was like the camera focused itself on her.
Her smile is contagious, Nicholas whispered to his wife who was captivated in the missionary’s presentation of the orphanage.
You mean that little girl, Stephanie whispered back, quickly pointing to the little girl on the screen before the slide show continued on to another picture.
Yeah, Nicholas answered.
Stephanie lovingly nodded her head, saying, I know.
That’s her, he mouthed to his wife. Isn’t she adorable?
Stephanie smiled and wept silently in her soul, for they had found their child. Or rather, the child had found them. It was then they knew adoption was the answer; it was His answer to their prayers.
After the service the missionary had given them the brochure from the adoption agency he and a few others ran in a village in Ethiopia, the Faith, Hope and Love Adoption Agency. Nicholas and Stephanie discussed certain legal issues of adoption with the agency and found themselves to be fully capable by Ethiopian law of adopting a child.
Stephanie opened the brochure to look over a few more cosmetic details, and her heart melted when she saw the same little girl in the side flap of the informational brochure. She shared this with her husband, prompting them to ask were the kids on the brochure some of those that remained at the orphanage.
The missionary told them it could not be promised that they all were indeed still there, but that some of them were. The couple asked about the little girl they had seen in the pictures, the little girl whose smile had captured their hearts already. He couldn’t remember her by name, but recognized immediately who the couple was asking about and assured them that he could give a call tomorrow morning to the agency to confirm her whereabouts.
Naomi was indeed found to be still within the care of the orphanage. It was His answer.



That same picture that was pulled from the manila envelope months later after the encounter with the Ethiopian missionary would decorate the refrigerator for months. That picture of a small female toddler in a bright hot pink Dora the Explorer t-shirt torn in the sleeve and lime green shorts that looked two sizes too big for her was spoken to daily. There were strawberry jelly kisses wiped off Nomi’s photogenic face after snack time in the morning. Colorful letters were written in macaroni and cheese yellow and tickle me pink, hanging on by magnets until they could hold no more and were moved to the drawer that held things for her scrapbook.
Among all the small clutter, the A+ on a report, the first drawing by their youngest at preschool, it hanged. It was the first thing Nicholas and Stephanie saw in the morning when reaching for the vanilla creamer, bringing a smile to their faces and giving them hope to continue to wish for their little girl so very far away – the little girl wishing for that someone to hug her when her fearful sobs shake her body so fiercely they dare to take her breath for a moment.



The flight overseas to the city of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia is very long, exhausting, and full of questions from their three daughters. Their eldest, Alexia, wants to know if this means they are moving to a new house because the bedrooms for the kids are now down to two, and with three – soon to be four – daughters that is an impossible fit, especially when she herself is soon to be fifteen . Her iPod set to repeat the same exhilarating piece from Pride and Prejudice, she cradles her younger sister Emma, who is every bit of a shy three year old. Her little sister’s curls spread on her lap as Alexia strokes her fingers through the almost snow white locks. Emma sleeps soundly through the hum of the engine with her thumb barely inside her lips now, her bottom lip cradling its fall.
Emma always called herself the baby.
Not for long, Emma-boo, Alexia says to herself. You will soon share that title with your new sister. It’ll be Emma-boo and Nomi now. She smiles as she thinks about it.
She couldn’t wait to meet her new little sister in person. Strangely, even though Sophie and Emma were her blood sisters, she didn’t feel any different about Naomi than she had on the trips to the hospital on the days those two had been born. She was her sister too, a Jackson just like all of them.
Meanwhile, Sophie, the impossible five year old quizzes her parents on her soon-to-be sissy, looking once more over the only connection she has with Naomi’s world, holding the picture up very proudly for the gentleman seated behind them to see.
“Isn’t she pretty?” Sophie blatantly asks the man in her five year old honesty.
He nods, smiling as he says, “That’s a very pretty little girl. Is that going to be your sister?”
Taking a deep breath in, her little teeth showing as she excitedly grins, “Yep!”
The gentleman chuckles a little, as her excitement is contagious, “Does she have a name?”
“Yep, we’re going to call her Naomi. Her real name is Ah-meen-ah, though,” Sophie slowly spells out with her words, just like her mother and father had done for her younger sister Emma several times when the child found it difficult to pronounce the beginning “ah” sound.
“Well that’s a very pretty name.”
“I know,” Sophie answers, her eyes big and her curls bouncing with several nods up and down.
Stephanie taps on her daughter’s shoulder, “Sophie, what do you say?”
She quickly covers her mouth with her little hand, both in embarrassment and amusement, and giggling to herself peeks back around the seat again to the gentleman, “Thank you.”


“Mommy, tell me about Nomi again,” Sophie cuddles into the crook of her mother’s arm, exhaling from exhaustion, her eyes rimmed in red and her eyelashes falling in a sporadic rhythm over her blue seas. Weary of the extended flight, Sophie feels around for Emma’s sippy cup and sucks the last of it dry.
“Sweetheart, we’ve already told you all we know about Naomi,” Stephanie answers. She truly felt like tears could break forth any moment from the stress of everything. It is all she can do to put forth the effort to seem like the Mommy she knows her girls need her to be right now.
“But I wanna know more…” Sophie pouts, her rosy pink bottom lip poking out, her small, light blonde eyebrows furrowed into a small V. Thinking to herself for a second, she then cocks her head in question, peering up into her father’s face, “What are her Mommy and Daddy’s names?”
“Honey, we don’t know anything other than what we’ve told you already. Naomi is a very shy, beautiful little Ethiopian baby. And she’s a Jackson just like you,” Nicholas kindly tells his daughter.
She points proudly to her chest with her pointer finger and says, “Nomi’s just like Sophie.”
“Yes, just like you,” Nicholas answers and smiles.