Year In Review - August

Note: Through New Year's Day we're going to review the year that was 2006 for us, Thom & Amanda McMurray. This was our first full year in Mali and brought many, many changes. We hope you enjoy this look back at our year. Click on the links in each review to read what we wrote back then.

2006 In Review - August

• August is a really hard month to summarize. It was our first month with Miriam and Hannah. We wrote many entries about the process and recorded what thoughts we had as we expanded our family and our hearts. The health of the twins occupied most of our thoughts and prayers. Hannah was very sick and we didn't know what the cause was.
  
• In time we learned that Hannah was lactose intolerant and all baby formula we can buy in Mali uses cow's milk. What a relief it was to find out that she could support goat's milk! Still, there were many days and nights where we didn't know if Hannah was going to live another 12 hours.
• We found a pediatrician in Bamako and made our first doctor's visit.
• August 16 was our 9 year wedding anniversary!
• Of course there were many joys in the first month (you just had to look for them). We wrote about some of the surprises of the babies.
  
• After our 2nd doctor's visit we were so happy to find out Hannah weighed more than 5 pounds!
• And, here were some of the stranger aspects of adopting here.
  

August was probably the most difficult month of our lives, but the Lord was faithful and gave us daily strength where we didn't think we'd find it. Tomorrow we'll look back at September, 2006.