What's in a name, anyway?

Sorry to have taken a brief blogging break. It's been a very busy couple of days! Jason is still teaching a couple days a week and in between building an awesome play house for the kids out of recycled barn wood, traveling to Punxsy to acquire said barn wood, and the baseball schedule, we've been going strong.

Oh - and we had a yard sale today! Those things are always a lot of work. We made just under $200 to apply to the Bring Hugo Home fund. Every penny counts! And speaking of Hugo ....

We've been asked about his name a couple of times so I thought I'd share a little bit about how we chose his name:

The name Kwabena means "born on Tuesday".  As much as we like his African name (and we do!), we want him to have a new name that will represent who he will become. His new name was given to us by the Lord and we're so excited for the possibility that it holds. The name Hugo means: "bright in mind and spirit".

The meaning of all of our children's names are so important to us! Interestingly, the meaning behind each name has really proven itself to be true every time!

He currently has a last name that is a name shared by many children in the orphanage. I think it's kind of sweet that they have a family name together. However, that name will be changed to our own family name when he legally becomes our son.

His middle name was harder for us to decide. I know that not everyone has a middle name and that it is in many ways superfluous, but we wanted to give him a middle name to tie his heritage in with his future. We considered African names (do you know how many tribes there are in Ghana? A LOT! - and each one has its own language.), family names on both sides of our family, names from the Bible, names that represent who we think he will become, names that reflect his past, and on and on. We've said it every time we have been given the responsibility of naming one of our children: this naming business is HARD!

But it's so important, so we don't take it lightly. His middle name will be Bandele (Ban Day Lay), a west African tribal name which means, "Follow me home", or, "Given life away from home". We like both the practical and spiritual connotations of that meaning, and, unless the Lord shows us otherwise, that's who he will be.

Please pray that our fingerprinting paperwork would be processed quickly so we can get a court date as soon as possible!