Our Documents are China Bound!

What a relief to say that Lord Willing our documents will be leaving the USA for China on Friday, July 26th and are scheduled to arrive on Tuesday, July 30th!  China will then look over our documents for their approval and then we will receive a Log-in Date to their system.  Once officially approved, which takes 2-6 weeks usually, we will be available to be matched with all children who meets our special needs application requests.  At that point, any day, any time we will find out who are daughter is!

The past two months have been an emotional roller coaster.  It took extra long to receive our immigration approval and so it forced us to certify and authenticate documents in separate packages with unexpected deadlines.  Some documents had to go back to Florida and then to Houston for Authentication while others went on to Chicago on two separate occasions to get proper stickers etc for China.  I'm now quite familiar with Fed-ex and tracking numbers as well as 3 different ladies in Florida, Texas and Illinois who helped walk-in papers to appropriate offices in order to get things done before expiration.  Documents are not allowed to become 6 months old.

Through all of this craziness, we know that God has a plan.  He is paving the way with every slow down or speed up to place us directly in the path of our daughter.  Will you join us in praying for her journey as well? 

Happy Mother's Day!

What a wonderful Mother's Day I have had today.  My day started out with breakfast in bed and receiving wonderful little crafts and pictures from my boys.  This picture that Jonas, our 7 year old, drew for me was such a reminder of our little girl whom we do not know yet.  The boys are so excited to get their sister.  Jonas even colored her skin a little darker and made big beautiful eyelashes on her.  I already miss her and don't even know her yet. 

Our process is finally starting to move forward again.  We received our finalized hard copy of our home study in the mail late last week.  We had been waiting on that for 2 months.  That allowed us to make the next step in mailing off our 1-800A application for applying for immigration approval to adopt a child from China.  Hopefully within a month we will receive approval to be fingerprinted and then be able to move closer to getting documents all ready to send to China. 

This past month has been full of blessings!  We have done 4 different fundraisers and God has been so good!  We do plan to get a raffle up and going soon as well. 

Thank you for your prayers for us and our little girl.  We hope to receive a phone call and be able to share her picture with you very soon.  Until then, I will leave this picture drawing of our daughter with you to pray for.  God's timing is perfect and we are excited to be a part of it!

Officially Waiting

Just before Easter we finished and finalized our "waiting child" application. This means that our adoption agency now has all the information they need from us to begin matching us with a child. It's really exciting to think that we can receive a phone call any day now notifying us that we have a daughter waiting for us! Once a match is found, we are told that it will take on average 6 months before China says it is time to travel.

In the meantime, we are working hard on getting our papers through a lot of processes and delivered to China for their official approval. We have also been overwhelmed by many friends as well as my employer to help raise funds for our adoption. We are so grateful for this outpouring of love and for God's constant provision. He has provided in many ways that we would have never expected.

Stay tuned....we hope to add a Pay Pal Donation button to our page and raffle opportunities in the near future.  Thank you for your continued prayers!

Getting there

Well, we have been working hard the past couple months on training, paperwork, collecting paperwork, getting physicals etc.  This "paper pregnancy" thing is tough work.  Since I've been physically pregnant twice, I must say that my first two pregancies were must easier :)  The hard work is paying off though, we had our last home study visit with our social worker on March 2nd which means we should be done with a home study report very soon.  This will allow us to work on our "waiting child" application in order to apply to be matched with our daughter. 

While doing this we can also begin our immigration approval and finalizing of documents that will be certified etc and sent to China.  We sure can't wait to share with you our first picture of our daughter when we get matched.  God is good!  Thank you for your prayers!!

Happy Chinese New Year!

 

We celebrated Chinese New Year today for the very first time!  What a feast it was with some wonderful Christian friends who have opened their hearts and home by sharing this new tradition with us.  We hope to be celebrating with our daughter next year!  God is so good!



A Blessing for Another

This past week we were so excited to have our first Home Study meeting scheduled and start moving a little further in the paperwork process.  It was scheduled for yesterday and cancelled yesterday.  At first I was dissapointed but then I found out that our social worker is also involved in Domestic Adoptions.  She was helping to unite a brand new baby with their adoptive parents in the Kansas City area.  I felt so happy as I thought of that family snuggling at home as a family of 3 for the first time last night.  What a blessing for them! 

Sweet Moment

Earlier this week I had a really sweet moment with Jonas, our six year old.  After supper one night he went upstairs to his bedroom and emptied out all of his change.  He brought down the handful of money and said to me, "Mom, I want you to have this money to help bring my sister home."  It was awesome to see that he already loves his sister.  He also told me today that he was going to save money to buy her toys.  So, my daughter in China, you have a big brother who loves you very much!