We have Travel Approval!!

Joyah is 17 months old today and we received word this afternoon that we are approved by China to travel!  Wow!  In fact, we most likely will be on a plane next Wednesday, March 19th but we will find out for sure in the next few days.  We are excited, nervous and feeling a bit hurried.  The boys were so excited to hear the news and Jonas (who will be 8 years old tomorrow!) prayed for our safe travel tonight at supper, which I really appreciated.  I am a bit nervous about traveling so much. 

God is just so good!  We will be in China for at least 2 weeks and should be holding our little girl about 3 days after we arrive in the country.  I will update soon with specifics but here is a new picture we received last week of Joyah Mi Ni!

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!

Happy Chinese New Year 2014!

We had a wonderful time celebrating Chinese New Year this past Friday!  Some friends taught us about the New Year traditions and celebration last year and we enjoyed creating our own celebration and feast this year as we thought of our daughter Joyah Mi Ni.  We are even starting to get the hang of using chopsticks ;)

Paperwork is in the process of going through US immigration and the National Visa Center so we still have no dates for travel other than the estimated April or May to be able to bring Joyah home.  Just more waiting as usual.

It's Official! It's a Girl!

Although our daughter was born 15 months ago,

its still an awesome announcement!!
We are so thankful for this gift from God!
 

Joyah Mi Ni McNutt

 

14 months

 

5 months

 

One Year Later

One year later and we have so much to be thankful for.  We don't have new information to share but I want to share how the Lord has blessed us this past year as we wait for our daughter.  James recently wrote the following article for our Orphan Ministry newsletter at church. 

Adoption isn’t Easy

12 months have gone by since we submitted our application to our adoption agency to begin our journey to our daughter.  The past year has been filled with paperwork, fundraising, waiting, praying, and a growing desire to bring our little girl home.  It has been busy and hectic at times and dreadfully uneventful at others.   I wish I could say that we have possessed nothing but good attitudes and patience throughout this past year, but the reality of adoption is that it isn’t easy.  I wish it were.  I wish if a loving family wanted to adopt a waiting child that is longing for a forever family it would be a simple process.  As I reflect over these last months; however, I sense that God has been using this time to prepare us to bring our girl home.  He has been growing and maturing us.

If adoption were easy, I’m sure I would be missing the truth of how special adoption is.   It is too easy to depend on ourselves when something is easy.  This adoption has taught us to depend on God for many things.  When we started, there was a mountain of money required for the process.  We didn’t have it, but God did.  It is 12 months later and we have all the money we need to get our girl.  When we started, we didn’t realize how much our family and our little girl are loved by our friends and family.  It is 12 months later and I’m still amazed at the generosity and support that has come from the special people in our life.  When we started, we thought we’d be able to control the process more.  It is 12 months later, and we realize how much God is orchestrating to bring us to the right time and to the right place to meet our little girl who He has chosen.  If we had been able to get our girl 12 months ago I think we would have missed out on knowing and loving our precious Father so much better.

God never tells us things will be easy if we just believe in Him.  I actually believe He wants areas of life to be difficult.  He wants some things to be beyond us and our power.  When we encounter those hard areas of life that we can’t do in our own strength, then He gets to work at full force.  We are left to stand back and marvel at how only God could have accomplished such an amazing feat.  God uses these hard areas of life to teach us how amazing He is.

So, its 12 months later and we still don’t know our little girl’s name or when we’ll bring her home.  I’m sure we’ll still be battling impatience and frustration in the days to come just like we have over the last year.  I’m sure we’ll have our moments of trying to control things and do it our way.   It won’t be easy.  Even after we bring our girl home, things will be hard, but that’s ok.  By depending on God, we’ll get to stand back and marvel at how He takes care of the hard stuff.

We have a Winner!!!

We have a Winner!  

CAROL LINN  Ticket # 467584

 

A BIG THANK YOU TO ALL OF YOU WHO PARTICIPATED!

 

We want to give a big thank you to all of you who participated in our Beef Raffle! Through your donations we were able to raise $1800.  God has been so faithful to us throughout this process.  We thought one of the hardest parts about this adoption was going to be coming up with the funds but we were wrong.  God is using so many people that we don't even know and avenues that we would have never expected to raise the money.  We are being shown that as we answer God's call, he is always faithful to see it through. 

 

Please continue to pray with us as we wait for our referral.  We get increasingly excited to find out news of our daughter every day.  For those of you who know me well, I have even thought that dresses and the color "Pink" look cute now.  I would have never felt that way in the past.  God is preparing our hearts and we pray that he is preparing "hers" as well. 

 

Thank you so much! 



 

May God Bless All of YOU!

 

James, Michelle, Jonas, Josiah & ? McNutt

RAFFLE TIME!!!

It's been a month since we finished our paperwork and we were officially logged-into China's adoption system.  We are now in the fundraising stage as we wait for a phone call to tell us they have matched us with our daughter.  It was a little hard to hear recently that we should be prepared to wait up to a year for this to happen but we know that everything is in God's hands now and completely out of ours.  We take comfort in knowing that God knows everything we do not as we pray for our daughter. 

We are excited to announce that we are running a Raffle opportunity connected with our blog to help raise funds for our adoption but at the same time bless a family with much lower grocery bill. 
For every $10 (1 ticket) or $25 (3 tickets) donated on our blog through PayPal, you will be entered into the raffle drawing that will begin today and end on October 26th.  We will deliver the meat up to 150 miles from KC as we want many friends around us to be able to be involved.  Please feel free to share this flyer by any means possible. I can also send you an e-mail copy if you would like.  More specific details are listed on the flyer.

May God Bless You as You Bless Another!  Thank you!!