This week has been interesting... finally on Tuesday we heard something... they wanted an updated financial statement. Fine, no problem!
Then Wednesday they wanted a copy of the LOC for Jia Yi, some info on us personally, and they wanted to know if the boys were "special needs." That was interesting... for the record... the boys were not special needs in the sense that they had a diagnosis that would affect them their whole life or needed a surgery... but each of them WAS in an orphanage without one on one attention from parents who practiced things with them. They were both developmentally behind and had weak muscles in their legs and Anthony was pretty much weak all over. Not to mention the issues with food and bonding and fear of being left... etc. But now... they are "healthy as horses" and about as wild. haha!
We have VBS this week at church, so every evening Alex and i go and Anthony and daddy stay in... we have all been having fun and Alex is learning about our bodies and how cool God made us, as well as Egypt. Anthony has been being a boy and playing in the shop with daddy and the equipment... He looks like he hasn't had a bath in weeks every night!! haha! He loves it though! And every night when i get to VBS all my friends ask me if i have heard anything yet...
So we have written our LOI for two and have found a little girl, and on Sunday night which is Monday morning in China, our Liaison will be bringing the petition to the CCAA. YAY!!!! We are as nervous as the days we went to court for Alex and Anthony... this is or can be life or death for an orphan, a "special needs" child, what will her life be like if she does not find a home? Seriously... she will be a throw-away because she is not normal. That breaks my heart.
God's heart is for the orphan, and our family has asked for God's heart in us... then our heart is for the orphan... we can't help it. I have known this was my calling since i was 10 and gave Jesus my heart.
We have known from the beginning that we should to pursue this as far as possible! There are over 1300 children on the waiting child list just from China... these children are paperwork ready to come home to families... but their files are just sitting there with no one wanting them. Every child DESERVES a home... God does not desire that children grow up without loving families, this is a result of our choice of sin.
If we are not allowed two, then i know that God has prepared the people working at our agency to help another family in the future bring home two at a time. From some comments we are getting, i am guessing some people are not in favor of two children at a time. Fine. Its not for everyone. We have requested two every single time we have adopted. We feel we can handle it. Sometimes we seem to hit walls constantly while on a Mission for our God. Not a big deal... not everything we do in life is easy, when we know this is what God wants us to pursue... we keep going, persevere, keep on keeping on. God has called us to serve orphans. Period. We are serious about it.
Here is a great story of God's will seeming elusive that i recently read... This what i am talking about!
We are still waiting... naturally the little girl that no one wanted for months has been snatched up, but who can blame them, she was adorable and we are now on girl #6!! Haha! I am working on writing the all important LOI today requesting the second girl. Still not sure when we will be petitioning China, but maybe tonight and maybe it will have to wait until Monday. Wow this week went fast!!! We are SOOO ready for an answer! Thank you to everyone who is praying for us and for China. We look forward to seeing God's will unfold in front of us...
This week, Monday night to be exact, China will be posting a new list of Waiting Children on the shared list. That means that after that happens we can petition through our agency's Liaison in China, to adopt 2 children. OH MY!!!!! I can hardly believe it is finally time! We have been waiting about two weeks. Lyndsay, at our agency has located another little girl us and as long as she is still on the list when we request, we will send in an LOI for her as well. This girl has been on the list for several months now, so it makes our case stronger. If you remember, the longer the child has been available the more likely China will be to let us adopt her, because "no one else wants them" and they want them to be adopted as soon as possible. With more children coming out on the list all the time the longer a child is on there, the less likely they will be found by someone. Right now there are hundreds and hundreds on the list waiting for their families to find them!
I am not sure what day we will be petitioning, but i will post a small update to let you know... so you can help me pray for the Holy Spirit to soften the hearts of the CCAA and let us get both girls. We will be praying like crazies over here in our house. This is SOOOOO important!!
The boys are back home now... we sure missed them! They spent the week in TN with family. They swam and swam and swam, and came home, some tired puppies!
On a side note... we have been getting ready for our big sale!!! Wow, do we have a lot of stuff that we don't really need! And all this stuff takes up our time! Talk about SIMPLIFYING around here!! Today we did the garage... yuck... i can't believe how many bugs (ok, mostly spiders) move in there in a couple months time! ick! But it is beautiful now and ready for some serious "stuff" to be sold!!!
Well... my heart is too sad for words... The second little girl that we thought would be ours is gone from the shared list. Both Jerry and I truly believed she was ours, but clearly, not. I often have been told by other adoptive parents that you just KNOW when a child is yours. I am no longer a believer in that!!! I know God will bring us the children that He wants us to raise as long as we are willing, but i don't always think i will know which one it is supposed to be... I mean look at Anthony, he is clearly supposed to be in our family, but i wasn't sure about him for a long time... since we lost a match with another child that we THOUGHT was Anthony... I lost confidence in the "you'll just know" hypothesis. So for me the evidence is stacking up. :)
I am very happy for her, on the other hand, if she has found her forever family, i really, really wish it was us, but we will look for another little girl who needs us as much as we need her. I hope that we can find her soon, this is really hard on my heart. *insert tears here*
Of course i will update here as soon as i know anything else...
We have a second little girl picked out!!! I can't share who she is until we hear approval from China. But she is so precious! But naturally, she is not ours until she is... So I am praying that she will be ours... I mean if she finds her family before we get to choose her then that will be great, but we really feel like she belongs in our family. We really hope that China will think so too!
We are praying for China to be convicted by the Holy Spirit to approve us for our 2 girls!!! We want this like we have never wanted anything!!! I mean when we were waiting for the boys, we wanted them but we knew it was going to happen... where as this seems very unsure, so it feels like we want it more! Maybe its just because it seems elusive a little... Does that make sense!!!?
Oh boy! Or should I say Oh Girl!!!!! These girls need our family and we NEED them!!! The boys around here are excited, too!!
OH MY GOODNESS!!!! Lyndsay, at our agency just called a few minutes ago and they have our letter of confirmation ALREADY!!!!!!! Whoa!!!!! That means we should get travel approval in about 6-8 weeks or so! Holy moly!!!!!! So in about 8-10 weeks we should be getting at least one of our girls!!!!! I can hardly believe it!!!! oh my oh my oh my!!!!! Woohooooo!!!!
So we are going to hold the letter for a about a week and hopefully the next list of waiting children will be about to come out and we can request the CCAA to approve us for daughter #2!! Its going to feel like a long week!! The longer we can wait to request the stronger our case, that no one else "wanted" her and we are the best thing for her... duh!!!
I finally decided to share this story with you all... in hopes that you will all pray for this situation with us.
And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. Matthew 18:5
Four weeks ago when we first started thinking of switching to the Waiting Child Program one of our first questions was “can we get 2 children?” haha! I knew better than that… China is pretty strict unless you can locate siblings or twins there’s no way.When we were surprised with a call on Friday AFTER the new list had come out, Lyndsay told us there were two different girls on the list that she had in mind for us. The first one had been in the last list and had been locked by someone else and then released… the second girl had actually been on the list for a month already. I said, “both!” (still no) but we had to choose which one we wanted to look at. That was hard, but after some praying and thinking we finally decided on the one with the delayed motor development. Crazy Jerry’s prayer was if we should get the girl missing her arm, that we would get a call within 15 minutes about a job!!! Well, as you know, no call came… His reasoning was that if we should get that little one, then we were going to need more work, because of the extra stuff that might be involved, and he is right. We had been praying that when the time came that we would be matched with the right baby. So we truly believe that Jia Yi is ours.Of course though we couldn’t get the other girly off our minds… we felt like we had “rejected” a child… which is not in our nature at all… We sent in the LOI and financial statement that they needed to apply for Jia Yi for us. Then 2 days later I started freaking out that she might not be our Kimi… What if her lagging motor development was more serious? What if? what if? I was definitely freaking out! I was sick to my stomach, I needed an update to see what she is doing now… stuff like that. I called Lyndsay to ask her some questions and go over with her all the IA doctor had discussed with me. Lyndsay was great she assured me that if we got an update and Jia Yi was more severe than we thought we could handle, it would not be a problem to release her and they would not think anything terrible of us. I felt much better, my fears were calmed and I felt at peace with our baby.
This thought of the other little girl still ran like crazy through my mind. So I thought I would look around on the WC advocate site and see if I could find her. Sure enough, I found her and she had tears in her beautiful Asian eyes and snot running down from her little nose, big cheeks, round face, just precious and even more pitiful to think that she was missing her arm… she looked perfect! So wouldn’t you know it, I emailed Lyndsay again asking if she was just sure we couldn’t adopt two at the same time… the answer was the CCAA sitesaid no.Over the rest of the week I stumbled across 2 other families who are in process to adopt two!!!! I was happy, but needed to find more info, because I just had to get the other little girl too!! All weekend I pleaded with God take the desire from my heart if this was crazy and not going to happen… my desires became stronger. So I emailed one family and asked some questions. I was praying the whole time!!!! The reply was simple, both children had to have special needs and we needed to convince the CCAA that this was likely the only and best way for these children to have a family in a pleading letter, proving we were prepared to handle the needs. Then the agency had to write a supportive letter. Then we would wait to see if China approved our request . Oh my!!! Then I asked on my advocate site if the little girl was still available… she was.
I wasn’t even sure if our agency would even want to try… I should have known better, but I decided that I would pray and fast Monday asking God to soften hearts that needed it to be willing to advocate for us. Also to calm me down so that I would have the right words to say… I was a wreck, I was so nervous… the life of my daughter depended on these decisions!!!On Tuesday I was way too nervous to eat, so I fasted Tuesday too. And prayed and prayed and prayed!!! Finally I called Lyndsay and told her about what I had discovered over the weekend. She was very EXCITED! And was going to look into it herself as well as talk to the Director of the Agency and see what he thought. I waited… the hours slowly ticked by…I could hardly stand it. When she FINALLY called (like 2-3 hours later, that’s all) it was good news! They were all willing to look into it, they wanted to talk to an agency that has done it before, but they hadn’t been able to reach them yet. They were concerned that we might have to put together another Dossier since there would be another child and of course they would have to figure out any differences in fees. I was so happy when I got off the phone with her that I cried. To me it was soooo important that they would want to try. And Guess what? The little girl was still available!!! I could hardly believe it! I just knew it was going to happen! Yet I was a little afraid to get too excited…
So we waited for the experienced agency to call back…
Finally Lyndsay called me late afternoon on Wednesday. She had just had a very good and informative conversation with another agency coordinator who had requested more than one child at a time on several occasions. They are more than willing to go ahead with this special request but we wanted to make sure everything was done right the first time… because if they say no the first time, they will most likely say no again, should we ask again!! Most of the requests were made by people who were already approved for one child on the special needs list, and then found the need of another, too. Basically our “chances” right now wouldn’t be terribly good, because #2 was not very old and had not been on the list very long. So some suggestions were a)to wait a while, at least 2 weeks and then ask, b) look for a child that has been on the list longer, c) look for an older child or a child with a more “severe” need, I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, because at the time I really thought that we were supposed to have that little girl! So of course she said I could think about it, talk with Jerry and pray about it, then let her know, she was going to be out of the office on Thursday anyways… which was perfect for me, because I think I will be fasting yet again tomorrow while we figure some things out. Haha! When we hung up I did some instant praying!!! Oh my!!!
We had already decided for now any ways that we wanted Alex to remain the oldest child. That may change someday, who knows, but for now that is what we feel is right. So that means she can’t be older than Alex. I went outside, watered some garden and chatted on the phone with a friend, when I came in and checked email, an email came in from one of the waiting child advocate sites with a child that matched my requests… Guess what!!!? She was listed on there by MY Agency!!! I thought that was funny… then I saw her picture. It took my breath away… she is beautiful, and her eyes are amazing!!! I immediately thought God specifically sent her to me. She is a month older than Anthony!! Her special need is mild hemiplegia on her right side, which very well could be made worse by being institutionalized. Interesting. Oh my!!! I could take her, too!!! Good grief!! If anything, it showed me that there might just be another child that is meant to be ours. Now my mind is open again…
So now I really don’t know what we will do… I think we will continue looking during our two weeks. I am going to pray that God sends a family to choose the little girl missing her arm, because I think she is too young for our purpose to be approved. Tomorrow I will fast and pray … then Friday I will talk to Lyndsay about it all some more. Whew!!! Dramatic, huh?
The biggest prayer that we have at this time is for us to know our child and for China to approve this wonderful request!! We already feel it is God’s will for our lives, to bring as many orphans home as we can so that we can teach them about Jesus.
On Friday, July 2 we received our Pre-Approval for Baby Jia Yi!!! In just 5 days!!! Yay!!! I guess that means that China has acknowledged that we have requested her and so far are ok with us getting her. I am sure that now they will have to go over all our documents and make sure that they really think that we are ok for Jia! The Letter of Confirmation (LOC) could be a few weeks to a couple months away. I have noticed that a lot of people call it an LOA so I guess it is also a Letter of Acceptance or Approval or Affirmation, maybe? We are waiting for our updated Homestudy to approve us for "Special Needs" children and then we can send that in to USCIS (basically Homeland Security) so that the US can approve us (once again) to bring orphans into the US.
Since we received our match with Jia Yi, we have been working on preparing for a fund raiser sale. We are planning it for August 5, 6 and 8th. The 8th will be our LID-versary of 4 years in China. Won't that be neat when we have all our funds raised as a celebration!!!? We of course will be advertising a bunch and fasting and praying a lot for someone to come and purchase our Motorhome, the Baja1000 ready race quad and whatever else it will take to bring Baby Jia Yi home! My friend Bonnie's youngest kids have offered to bring over their Lemonade stand and sell Lemonade and cookies (i think), We are selling tons of books from our library and boxes of scrapbook supplies... I have only kept my absolute favorite items. I am making homemade cards to sell to. We should have all your normal items like clothes, toys, and probably some tools, antique furniture (our first donation, from Jerry's parents), crystal dishes and hopefully some garden produce as well. If you have any other ideas of things we could make to sell or if anyone has anything they would like to donate to the "Cause" we would LOVE it and be forever grateful!!!
This adoption stuff is not cheap and since we started this journey to a daughter in China the estimated cost has gone up by at least eight thousand dollars! Goodness! But seriously the money is not a problem for God to take care of... its our hearts that seem to be the problems these days... so many people have said to me that they would love to adopt but it is just too much money... kind of a bad excuse, since everything is God's in the first place. And what is a little money in exchange for a child growing up in a family and learning to love Jesus like we do!? The Bible tells us to take care of the Orphans and the Widows... God has put it heavily on OUR hearts and we are obeying... and couldn't be happier about it. Alex and Anthony are the most amazing little boys I could ever ask for. I wouldn't want to imagine life without them. They are MY children through and through!!!
