Naming Baby Ethiopia!

We have been lamenting over names for hmmmm... a year. We decided to not put it off any longer and name our child so that we can get used to calling him by his name. For just over 24 hours we called him his Ethiopian name, but we mispronounced it that whole time! Our baby was named by his mother as far as we can tell, and we like it. We won't be able to post that name here until after court.

Here the story of choosing the first name of our fourth child...

We have had a short list of names that we have been considering for a few months. As we were getting ready for bed the night of our referral, I sent up another "wish prayer" for God to help us name our son. We got into bed, and I gave William an ear bud to listen to the Daily Audio Bible with me. The reading *just happened* to include II Samuel 23:20-23 which is about Benaiah. I paused the iPod, and we discussed whether this was a coincidence or not. Why would we discount this as a fluke when we didn't when God used our daily Bible listening to tell us to adopt from Ethiopia?! AND "Benaiah" is on the short list!!

BENAIAH
(ben-i-uh)

Benaiah is Hebrew for "God has established." He was King David's general for the army of the Kingdom of Israel. He can be found in the Bible in I Chronicles 27, II Samuel 23, and I Kings 1. We think it interesting that Benaiah killed a lion in a pit on a snowy day because it is a big deal for an African male to kill a lion.