7 years ago today, my wife and her mother were sitting in Katmandu Nepal picking up our newly adopted son. 7 years ago today, my wife officially became a MOMMY. After a flight from Cincinnati to Los Angelas to Bangkok Tailand to Katmandu Nepal, 32 hours in all, my wife and her mother stepped off the plane to another world. A 3rd world country that does not have a bucket to squirt in or a window to throw it out. Where approximately 50 Nepalese men met the two of them as they were to pick up their luggage all wanting to carry them to the car for them. One man who was about 60 years old carried my wife's and mother in laws bags to the awaiting van. He put them in the car and my wife handed him 5 american dollars. He dropped to his knees thanking her for the generousity. The driver told my wife that she tipped him way too much that 5 american dollars was the amount that most of the men made all month. As they drove to the hotel, the Yak and the Yeti, that was the former residence of the leader of Nepal which had been converted, my wife saw what a 3rd world country really looked like. Butcher shops cutting meat on the sidewalks, the same river that ran thru the city was the drinking water, bathing water, cleaning water, animal water and all. Houses were partitally finished, rooms started but never finished, piles of large rocks next to smaller rocks next to even smaller rocks where people had been breaking them by hand. She said the show "Feed the Children" did not do it justice. They settled into the hotel for a bit then it was time to go pickup our son. The attorney who was handling the paperwork on that end and his wife was watching our son in their home. They kept kids from time to time depending on the situation awaiting adoptive parents. In our case, our son had been to the local hospital 2 times for pneumonia since the first week of March. He would have been left in the orphanage outside of town to live or die normally, but since we had signed paperwork stating we wanted him, law said they had to send him to the hospital for treatment. There was 22 small children that had died of pneumonia in the orphanage that month alone. But our son was not one of them for after the second visit, he stayed in town at the attorney's house. When they brought our son to my wife and she held him for the first time, my mother in law took a picture as she was telling him his name, Joshua Alexander Prabal Lumpkins. Joshua Alexander is what we chose to name him. The Prabal part came about because our son was found abandoned in a field on Dec. 2 2010 by a policeman. This field is notorious for children being left their and abandoned. He was found with another boy laying side by side, who was adopted by a couple from Columbus Ohio (they are not related for we did DNA testing). Joshua was about a month old and the other boy was about a year older. The policeman took both boys to the hospital and it was "determined" that Joshua's birthdate was around November 9th, 2010 so this is his given birthdate. They based this on the umbilical cord and physical appearance but nobody will EVER know for sure his true birthdate. He was given the name Prabal Balak, Balak means boy in nepal and also means King. So his name became Joshua Alexander Prabal Lumpkins, coincidence in the Book of Joshua, 24:9, it mentions that Zippor was the father of Balak.
Today is Joshua's GOTCHA day. Adoptive families celebrate kids birthday's as normally but they also celebrate the Gotcha day as in the day they got them. We celebrate all 4, the day Joshua was told he was born, the day he actually was found by the policeman and the day my wife actually picked him up for the first time and then the day that I met them in the Cincinnati airport when I first saw and met Joshua, April 27. So even though he will never know his true birthdate, his true biological mother and father, he will always know his mommy and daddy. Kids are absolutely amazing creatures. Josh is fully aware that he did not come from mommy's belly, that he was born in Nepal, that we adopted him and all that goes with it. He does not miss a beat and I think of him no different than my own 2 biological daughters. He is on spring break this week so I am watching my 7 year old "adoptive son" and my 10 week old "bilogical" granddaughter. It is funny because EVERY place I take them Joshua has his chest puffed out like the king gorilla telling everbody within earshot that "I'm an uncle, I am 7 and I am an uncle, It is wierd that I am so little and I am an uncle, she is my niece, and on and on and on". Tonight we will be eating at his favorite restaurant, La Isla over in lawrenceburg, then coming back and watching home videos of him when he was little, of Nepal and such. He gets books about Nepal and reads constantly about the place where he was born but knows fully that Nepal is where he was born but Kentucky is his home.
Tomorrow he wants to go fishing at the game farm (that is my boy). So far he has managed to catch a Sunfish, Redear, White and Black Crappie, Largemouth, Ky Bass, Bluegill, Channel Cat, Rainbow trout, brown trout, hybrid, white bass and a drum. He has not managed the Smallmouth and I think he would have caught that at Dale Hollow this past December when I was taking him and momma on their first FNF trip but as usual, emergency surgery on me stopped that from happening. Hopefully he will get that chance this year. I have this one little spot on Dale Hollow that is known to give up a Brownfish or two and can't wait to give him a shot at it.
Just though I would share for no in particular reason.
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Originally Posted by DJD
