End of June Update

We received our I-800 back from the National Visa Center last week, and got our NVC Letter, as well as some confirmation numbers we needed in order to apply for Josiah and Judah's Visas.
If you are not in the "adoption world" you don't know what a GUZ number is...or an I800 and you wouldn't know to be excited, but all these things mean that we are moving along in the process and closer and closer to bringing our precious boys home!

Life right now seems like a whirlwind, and also like a very long wait. But we have waited before, and seen firsthand God's goodness in our little family, in very big ways. So we wait expectantly and with hope!

I keep telling myself that God's timing is perfect, and I just need to put one foot in front of the other and keep checking things off the to do list. And it feels like a mile long to-do list!

On my list: potty train (that is going well), order books for school that starts in a week (we will do a bit of 2nd grade so that when we come home we can take a longer break, and also just to keep in the habit of things), put the kids together in bunk beds (Joe made the bunk beds and we took turns painting them, and we are almost ready to go), buy a twin mattress, get a second crib,...pack, finish my vaccinations for China,...get a few more things notarized, apply for our Visas to China, get more passport photos taken (you have to bring a bunch with you for meetings in China), make freezer meals, clean the house, move the kids rooms around, make copies of documents for China....and about 20 more things. Some of which are not imperative, and I know some things will just not get done.

I gave up on a few projects...like painting the living room (but I am still hoping to paint our bedroom since I already have paint on one wall), running the Tough Mudder in mid-July with my girlfriends, and doing a gallery wall at church (I handed it off, praise the Lord).

Honestly, I can feel very anxious about my to-do list, and yet impatient about not leaving sooner...and I just have to stop and submit my days to the Lord.

My biggest to-do is to enjoy my kids, and be patient with them. I will not get this time back! and the same goes for my sweet husband. We are about to get a lot busier, and date nights might be non-existent for a while, so we need to enjoy this time--busy as it is--while it lasts.
I just need to trust in the Lord.

"In quietness and trust is your salvation."

I love that verse from psalms. I can rest even in this crazy time (that is about to get a lot crazier).

Our next steps for adoption are to pack, mail in our visas through a courier, and for our Article 5 to get picked up in China. We are expecting to have Travel Approval (TA) sometime at the end of July and to leave 10 days later...hopefully by August 2. It doesn't look likely that July 26 will be our travel time because of the 4th of July holiday and just how our paperwork is going.

Please keep praying for our sweet boys, and us. Pray for them to be healthy and for attachment ( I will post more on that topic to come), and for our current kids to bear all this change.

Thank you all for caring about us, and supporting us so faithfully!

My dear friend Karen had a garage sale for us two weekends ago and raised $180.00 for our adoption! A few of you have given online to our Lifesong for Orphans matching grant and that has been such a blessing. THANK YOU Jen and Sue!! Seriously, it amazes me how generous you are!!

If you would like to support our adoption financially you can go to:   https://mystory.lifesongfororphans.org/stories/help-us-bring-josiah-judah-home-china/

Happy News!

Hallelujah, things are moving for our adoption. This week we got an update on BOTH BOYS, got our I-800 paperwork back and therefore were able to fill out the boy's visas, and now our Article 5 will be delivered to China sometime next week....our agency says we may travel as early as July 26!

AND We got a MATCHING GRANT from Lifesong for Orphans that will help to cover the cost of our adoption. God is providing for us and our boys!! We are trusting that God will work and provide for adoption expenses in incredible ways that we don't even understand.

Here is what we wrote on our Lifesong for Orphans site:

"Our family will be growing from 4 to 6 in just a few short months, and we are trusting God to provide financially, emotionally and spiritually and with His strength. Please pray for us, and if you would like to help us bring our boys home, we would be very grateful! We have been saving for a few years, but in having faith to say ‘Yes’ to Judah as well as Josiah, we took a big step of faith that God would provide! We were financially prepared for one child, but not for two, and yet we know the Lord is leading and has already provided lots of clothes, another highchair, a car seat and a crib mattress. It has been so neat to see the Lord move and take care of orphans through you! When we consider our plane tickets, orphanage fees (about $5,200 for each boy), hotel, visas, plane tickets for the boys, and our agencies fees we are still short about $15,000. We know that is a lot, but we are confident that this is where God is leading.

Lifesong is offering us a matching grant, and will match any donations up to $3,000! Donations can be mailed directly to Lifesong or can be processed online for a 3% fee."

We know He is faithful! Perhaps you are not called to adopt, but we are all called to take care of orphans and widows, and here may be a wonderful opportunity to bless these two boys, and us as a family! Thank you for loving our family!
 
We know God will provide as He wills it, and we do not at all want anyone to feel pressure or to give beyond what they are able. Again, with every dollar donated up to $3,000, Lifesong will match it!


Here is the link to Lifesong:
https://mystory.lifesongfororphans.org/stories/help-us-bring-josiah-judah-home-china/

Judah's Story

After we were matched with An Ying Hang life seemed like a whirl-wind. The kids were so very excited about a new brother, and we began to learn sign language at breakfast. I went to TJMaxx the very next day and started putting together a care package for him (we bought two of almost everything in the package so that we would have one for when Josiah came home, and one for the orphanage). I had such fun shopping and dreaming and when you are not pregnant, but paper pregnant, it all can feel so far off. Shopping helps : ) No, really! It makes it seem that much more real...I was buying a baby blanket for MY baby and a stuffed dog for MY little boy.
We started to tell our family and friends, but I felt like you do before you tell everyone you are pregnant...we had a sweet, sweet secret and it was wonderful.

Of course as soon as you say "Yes" to a file there is paperwork. We wrote our Letter of Intent to China, telling the CCCWA (Center for Chinese Children...something...Waiting...Adoption) why we would be a good fit for Ying Hang and why we could handle his medical needs. We filled out our forms and my faithful friend Michelle notarized more documents. Again, there is so much paperwork with international adoption. No morning sickness, just lots of paperwork, (lots and lots and mountains of paperwork) and I think I gained some "baby weight" with stress eating. Ha. We worked earnestly collection all of our documentation and sending it to the secretary of state, then to be certified at the Chinese embassy...then to our agency, and then to China. It is a looong, long process.

I put together a photo book with pictures of our family and wrote a little letter, using simple sentences about what our family likes to do...."We go hiking," "We play with trains", "We have a garden,"...etc. It was so interesting to dream about the Nannies showing the book to "Hang Hang".

*Interesting note: in China last names are first...so An Ying Hang would be last name An, first name Ying Hang. Children in an orphange are named using part of the city they were found in. An Ying Hang is from An Yang City. My friend Joey, who was an exchange student here for two years said that her family would call her by her full name, including last name. *

Joey helped me greatly by translating our little photo book into Chinese. She was so meticulous and the writing was so beautiful. I made a copy so that Josiah can have it when he is older.

Anyway, a month after accepting the referral for An Ying Hang (Josiah) we were in the middle of busy-ness with adoption paperwork and busy-ness with homeschooling and busy-ness with church and friends and just LIFE, when I got a call from the agency. I thought it was about Josiah.

But, it was not. It was a gal from the waiting child department with another file for us. Another little boy. "Oh," I said, "but we are already matched!" And she said that we had said we would be open to adopting two. I laughed. I thought our hands were full, but I didn't know what else to say except that I would like to see the file.

She sent it, and he was adorable. He was so big and sweet. His file said he had developmental delays and polydactyly. He was 2 and a half, and also in the Henan province. I stared at his picture after the kids went to bed, and I thought, he sure looks cute and I wonder who will get to adopt him.
I texted my hubby and he texted back, "Ha."
He came home, exhausted from a 13 hour day. We both were so tired that we didn't even talk about the sweet boy, and just went to bed.
The next morning I needed to tell the agency if we wanted a week to check out Zheng Zi Rui's file and think about it seriously. It was 8 in the morning and I openend my computer, the kids were eating breakfast and I went to email back, "No, thank you," and found myself (I think this was from the Lord) telling her, "Sure, we would love to look at the file." I felt strangely that we needed to at least look at the file before saying no.
And so that day we read through the file, and I watched the video of Zi Rui for the first time.
He was so chubby and sweet, walking all by himself, navigating around a toy, sucking on sweets and interacting with two nannies. He followed directions and was just beautiful and funny and sweet. I thought he was lovely, but of course thought that adopting two would be crazy. That wasn't what we set out to do, and so I thought it would most likely still be a "no."

I didn't even tell anyone for three days...maybe four.

My parents watched our kids that weekend while we went to a training and on the drive there my husband began to talk about it...like it was a reality. He explained that maybe God was giving us a sweet blessing and opportunity to be a blessing. This little boy was available for adoption due to an extra thumb...which seemed crazy. I felt incredulous, and yet hopeful at the same time...and Joe kept talking about it like it was a possibility. And so we decided to send his file to Children's to be evaluated like we did with Josiah's file.

In doing so we took a leap of faith. To have a file evaluated is $500 (gulp) dollars. I told Joe that even if Children's report was positive, I still wanted the right to say no, even after spending all that money, if we felt lead to say no. He agreed and we sent the file.

We did get counsel from other adoptive families and our pastor and our close friends, but it still felt like jumping off into the unknown. I wrote multiple pro/con lists. How could I have the energy to bring home two? My dear friend had adopted little Reed and Grace a few years previously, and we loved their story, but...but, but. I am not my dear friend Laura. I am not super mom. The boys would all be VERY close in age, and we wanted to do what was best for the kids we already had at home. We prayed, and prayed. It felt like God was opening a new place inside of us, giving us a bigger hope, and a bigger dream. We looked at our house...it was big enough, our medical coverage was good, the fact that we have a good income, and amazing support...all lead us to hoping we could adopt little Zi Rui.  Joe began to feel like it would be faithless to say no, that it would not be right. That we COULD give him a home. Joe believed that God was asking him to disregard the added financial cost, the added cost of self-sacrifice, and say "Yes" to this beautiful boy, too.

I remember walking last summer on Laura's farm and her laughing to me that we could get "two, too!" and I remember inwardly balking and outwardly laughing, "No way!" And I thought about that the whole time we were considering Zi Rui. But my heart and my head eventually reconciled as we prayerful considered this sweet boy. As I wrestled with the pro and con list, with myself--with not being enough--I wrestled with God's goodness, and His sufficiency. Was He really enough for me? Could He really provide and lead me? Was He able? Could I trust Him to work in me to love another child? I believe He is able. I believe He will provide, and that though I am NOT enough...His power will work in me, and "His power is made perfect in my weakness."

One thing we had to consider when accepting the referral for Zi Rui was that we did not want An Ying Hang's adoption to be delayed by even one day, or one week. And yet, because we were at a certain point in our adoption process, and our Dossier paperwork still had a few weeks left before it was sent to China, there was a little tiny window.

Literally it was a two week window in which we could get matched with another child and not delay travel for Ying Hang. And God saw fit to send us our little boy. Both boys are in the same province, Henan, but not the same city. Zheng Zi Rui is in Zhengzhou (Jin-Jo).

Children's report was positive. They looked at his x-rays, his bloodwork, the written reports and especially the video and they said that his hand looked just fine and we would pursue repairing his hand if we chose to adopt him in the first year. They said it looked like there was "a light on", he looked happy and was growing, and was following directions. They said he looked like he had "delays typical for institutional care" and they expected he would make great progress when home.

And so we found ourselves buying matching shirts, creating another care package, making another photo book, writing another Letter of Intent and smiling at God's sweet story that He was and is writing. We were surprised at ourselves and at what God was doing...We said "Yes!"

We Are Adopting!!

I am so excited to share our story with you!

God has grown our heart for adoption throughout the last few years dramatically. We have learned so much through our own journey and the journey of close friends. There are so many children in this world who NEED families. Our heart initially was just to have more children, but the Lord has also shown us the work that needs to be done, and the beautiful children He created who are in need of loving homes! After watching our dear friends adopt from China we began to talk about our next adoption...we dreamt about Haiti or Africa or China, but in the end we fell in love with our two little adopted friends and believed that China was the right place for our next adoption (they only require one trip, which worked well for our family).

In the Spring of 2016 we began to feel God leading us towards adoption again, and we began to pray about the timing. There are so many factors that play in to the timing of adoption, and often there is a very long wait! In May of last year we sent off for an information packet from a China adoption agency, filled out the forms, our friends filled out some reference questionnaires, and then we started our home study.

The home study took most of the summer and was completed in the fall. They ask you all sorts of questions, the social worker interviews you as a couple and then separately, the even "interview" your kids. We filled out a medical conditions checklist and specified what special needs we were willing to take, and also indicated the age range of the child we would like to adopt. We said 'boy or girl' 12-36 months at time of match'. We also checked small little box saying we would possibly be open to siblings or twins. We loved our social worker and had fun (for the most part) looking ahead to the future, examining our character and what adoption would mean for our family. I got to fill out a 10 page questionnaire about Joe, and our marriage and our parenting (Oh yes, super fun). Our home study was signed and complete by about November. We were approved! It was so exciting....and daunting.

And then the BIG PAPERWORK began. We began compiling all of our documents for our Dossier, which is just every piece of information about you that you could ever obtain...birth certificates, financial disclosures, medical forms and tests and results...all of it had to be signed and dated and notarized and sent to the secretary of state and then to the Chinese Consulate for authentication. It was a loooong process, and involved making lots of copies and visiting my best Notary Michelle often, and forking over a lot of money at Fed Ex : ) I tried to be very, very organized and kept everything in little tabbed folders with big clips and still at the end it was almost too much to handle. International adoption paperwork is literally a part time job!!

We had made some progress in the Winter, and went to a two-day training at our agency where we met several sweet families and began to get really excited about adoption. WHO would God give us? It was amazing to think about. I remember Joe telling me as we looked at a fiery red Maple in the agency parking lot that we would be home before the Fall, and I thought...no way! We went home and continued to work on paperwork, and life. Christmas went by and the paperwork felt long, and yet we were so busy with our kids--homeschooling, church, training and such--adoption felt very far off. We thought we had a very long wait ahead of us before being presented files and getting matched with our child.

Initially I thought that you could only get matched after your Dossier is mailed to China, however there are two categories of special needs orphans in China: Special Needs and Special Focus. Special Focus children have more significant needs or are harder to place in a family, therefore the agency gets these files and then calls families who are willing to accept these children as soon as possible.
So, one day in February we had an especially busy afternoon. Joe was working an evening shift, I was in the middle of changing a poopy diaper and the phone rang. It was our a gal from our adoption agency with the file of a little boy!

I was so terribly excited and shaking...could this be our little boy?  I can't even really describe the phone call...but it kindof feels like someone is calling to tell you that you may be pregnant. You feel hopeful and afraid and...butterflies.

His name was An Ying Hang, 22 months old, from the Henan province of China. He was TINY and cute as a button. He weighed only 18 lbs and we saw a few videos of him feeding himself, walking with help and rocking on a rocker.
He was precious. He turned his head to listen to a toy, and smiled at his nanny. He was bundled up like crazy as the orphanage he is in does not have heat in winter (and this is just a typical Chinese practice to dress in many layers).

His special needs, however, felt a bit daunting. He had atresia and microtia of both ears--malformed ears with no external auditory canal. He would need extensive hearing help, speech therapy and eventual reconstruction. We would probably have to learn sign language in order to help him communicate at first.

How kind God was, however, to allow us to get An Ying Hang's file! I grew up signing a bit with my family because my Dad is an ear doctor, an audiologist, with 30+ years of experience. He was able to tell us what accepting "Hang Hang" would truly mean for our family, the procedures and hearing aids he would most likely need, and he also was willing to get us the very expensive hearing aid devices for cost (this is a huge deal, as a BAHA is often $10,000 and not covered by insurance).

We decided we were pretty serious about An Ying Hang, started praying in earnest, and we and sent his file to Children's Hospital International Adoption Clinic to see what else they could see in his file.
All that week we sought counsel, prayed, hoped and dreamed. We had loooong conversations, talked to our kids about what it would mean to have a brother with special needs, and prayed some more.
I was listening to Sandra McCracken's God's Highway in earnest and I loved Song For Rachel:

Set up a sign or a post
To give us direction,
Lead us by good, clear paths,
Show us the way
Our tired and restless ways
Help and defend us, please
Stay by my side

Chorus
Your deliverance is coming
For us while we wait,
In the wilderness You walk before us,
Give us grace

I truly felt that God was leading us to our son. We began to dream of calling him ours, and saying 'Yes'. It all was happening so fast...I had not thoughts we would get a call until after our documents were in China...probably another 5 or so months.

Children's got back to us and told us what my Dad had said, and that though he was developmentally delayed, this is probably due to institutional care, and not having adequate hearing help, and that he would most likely catch up after he was home. We learned that many times children living in orphanages are 1/3 of their age developmentally, just because they often do not have the one on one contact of a family that they need. It is heart breaking, and sobering, to think of so many children living in these conditions. Often the orphanages in China are clean, the workers are caring...and yet it is not enough to have 1 Nanny to 15 or 20 children. And so little ones like An Ying Hang, who cannot hear well or communicate, often get left behind developmentally.

As soon as Children's got back to us with a positive report we breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that God was allowing us to move forward with Ying Hang's adoption and say YES.
I was, and am, so full of hope for this sweet little boy, our son. I cannot wait to meet him, and hold him, and tell him I will never leave him. That Jesus loves him and made him, and has good plans for him.

I felt so hopeful knowing that An Ying Hang was going to get to be in a family, our family, and that God would equip us to meet his needs and help him to hear. His Grandpa, my Dad, will be such an asset to us and to our sweet boy, helping us to meet his needs well and give him the care he needs.
Isn't that so neat? God is writing our story, An Ying Hang's story, and all of our stories. The Lord has delivered us, and will deliver us. He will come for us.

In the wilderness HE is walking before us, and will give us the grace we need.

And then a month later, we got another phone call....to be continued (Judah's story) : )