Waiting for Travel Approval!

Joyah is now 16 months old and we just completed the last bit of paperwork with the National Visa Center to get her home!  We are waiting now for travel approval from China which should come in about a month or so.  Exciting stuff!  We have been busy preparing her room and trying to navigate the enormous amount of travel information. Josiah (5) recently was cleaning toothpaste out of the sink for a very long time.  James asked him why he was cleaning so much and Josiah replied that, "if the house isn't clean, Joyah won't know that she is getting a new home".  Quite sweet :)

Many of you may like to hear the story of how God matched us with Joyah.  I recently wrote an article for our orphan ministry newsletter that I would like to share.  Thank you for your prayers!

 

A Match Made by God

 

by Michelle McNutt

 

We are so excited to tell you that we have been officially matched and promised to our daughter!   Joyah Mi Ni McNutt was born October of 2012.  She is currently 15 months old and is living in China with a foster family since her release from the hospital at 1 month old.  Joyah is the English name that we gave her; “Mi Ni” is the Chinese name that the hospital gave her meaning “Charming Girl”.  (We hope to bring her home in April!)

Our journey to find Joyah began in November 2012 after attending an adoption seminar.  While listening to presentations at the seminar we both felt drawn to China Special Needs and so our “paper pregnancy” stage began shortly after.  It took around 9 months to complete all the necessary steps of paperwork in order to have it (the dossier) ready to send to China for approval to adopt a child.  We received China’s approval on Aug 6^th, 2013 (the Log-in date for China).  At this point we were now ready to be matched with any child that would meet our application requests based on gender and special needs.  One would think that this would happen quickly.  Not so much.  Each agency is only allowed to review files from specific orphanages assigned to them and each agency will also place children based on how long each family has been in the waiting process. 

As of August 2013, we thought we were waiting on our “phone call” to tell us that we had been matched with our daughter.  The boys prayed for the phone to ring and we truly thought this was how we would be matched.  We took comfort in the fact that it was out of our hands and that we couldn’t mess it up.  We didn’t want to do the choosing. 

In November 2013, our agency had a list of children that had been referred to them by China to match with families.  Several of those children they could not match up based on their special needs and the family applications they had.  At that point our agency put them on a website advocating for them and calling all China families to take a look.  There was a little girl that was listed to be 13 months and a picture of her at 5 months old.  She had many scary medical conditions listed in her file and so we were not sure if we should pursue her.  After all, we didn’t want to mess things up, we wanted God to choose and for the phone to ring.  I did inquire about whether another family was pursuing her or not and was told there was, so somewhat relieved we continued to wait for the phone to ring.

Over the rest of the month, James and I both noticed independently that this little girl was still on the website and that she was listed as available.  We were both curious as to why she was available since another family was supposed to be pursuing her but we never talked about it.

 Thanksgiving weekend came and  God began to work.  I was thinking all weekend that I needed to talk to James about this little girl and hadn’t.  Sunday evening, James was on the computer doing something and he started to say, “I think we need to…” and I said “Check her out!?”   Apparently I had finished his sentence and God had been working on both of us at the same time to come to this same conclusion. 

December 1^st, we asked permission to review this little girl’s file and she was indeed available as the other family became overwhelmed with some of the things listed in her file.  We prayed to God to help us and to show us if we were doing something wrong.  We were scared to death!  ‘Close the door God if this is not right.’  Over the course of the month of December, we conversed with specialists and waited on China to send pictures, video and any more medical information that would be helpful in making an adoption decision.  It took a month to receive very little information but nothing ever closed the door and the little glimpses of her in the video made us smile. 

January 14, 2014 after asking China for permission to adopt Joyah Mi Ni, they answered, “Yes”!  God had made a match in our hearts!  The phone never rang but we opened a door when we heard God knock.