All is well! God is faithful! Macie is home and doing fantastic!

Finally....a confirmed travel date!!

Wow, I guess I really need to apologize for not keep this blog updated. So much has happened and so quickly over the last week or so and I have failed to keep it updated. First, on July 29^th, we received our TA (Travel Approval)!! That was the final paper we were waiting on from China! Once our travel guy confirmed a Consulate date for September 1^st, we were able to purchase airline tickets to travel (a full $1,000 less than anticipated – thank you Lord)! We are leaving for China on August 19 ^th! I can believe it! Only 17 more days!!! It looks likes we will be traveling with at least 2 or 3 other families, one of which is going to the same province! Our room additions are nearly complete and we have been gathering furniture, clothes, and other items for Macie. We requested an update on her measurements several weeks ago, but have not heard back. That is ok. We will know soon enough. We are planning on letting her pick her own clothes (within reason) when we get there. We are not sure if she has ever had that opportunity. We plan on taking our mini laptop with us so that we can Skype with the kids and hopefully keep our friends updated. The next step in the process is to wait for our travel guy to schedule our final travel meeting and to send a copy of our in-country itinerary. We don’t exactly relish our 14 hour flight to Beijing, but what are we to do – lol. I guess a few Tylenol PM’s will help – lol. One good thing about the flight itinerary, we get into Beijing at 2:20pm instead of the midnight that we experienced last time! That’s gives us some time to rest fore getting up at the crack of dawn the next day!

Another Miracle!

Come and see what our God has done, what awesome miracles He performs for people - Psalms 66:5

Just when we think that God has done all that He is going to do, He steps in and demonstrates His faithfulness to carry out his promise COMPLETELY! At my last post, we still needed to raise approximately $8,500 for our remaining in-country expenses. As always, we didn’t know how we were going to come up with it, but we trusted that God would again fulfill His promise to provide. And provide He did! We have had an "anonymous" donor that gave us $10,000 to take care of the specific needs as well as a little "buffer" money just in case the costs are more than anticipated! How awesome is our Lord!

All glory to God, who is able, through His mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Ephesians 3:20

Haven’t written in a while and so much has happened! Probably the most significant is we now have a tentative travel date! On August 19th, we should be departing the US to go get our daughter! We were hoping for July, but our Lord knows what He is doing. That week is the week that school starts back and we will hate to miss it. We have mailed off our travel Visa applications as well as our USCIS I-800 forms. We have also found out that Macie is in the 4 th grade right now, but we are not so sure that it is equivalent to our 4th grade or not. It looks like we may only traveling with one other family that lives in Korea. Our last travel group had 8 families. I don’t know if a much smaller "group" will be more beneficial or less. They may pair us up with another group, that would be fine as well. We also have another answered prayer! We have had another grant agency give us $1,500! Thank you Lord! We will definitely need it. During our first travel meeting last week (conference call), we found out that the airfare has went up significantly than was estimated by our agency. But, it doesn’t matter if it triples or quadruples, we are going to go when the time comes and the Lord will continue to provide!

LOA!

LOA!!

We have it! Our LOA has arrived! 58 days after our LID, we now have our LOA (Letter of Acceptance) from China! How awesome! We were told that it could be 60-120 days before we could get it, so I wasn’t really looking for it yet! What a great surprise! This doesn’t change our tentative travel dates, but its soooooo great to have this huge milestone behind us. We could travel as early as July, and as late as September (if current date statistics hold true). Thank you Lord!!

Two items of interest and praise!

Great news! Actually, I have two items that are definately worthy of praise! First, we found out yesterday (throught a credible source) that Ling did get her birthday box!! Thank you Lord! Second, today we found out that she has been attending a public school for several years and probably already knows "some" key English words! That fact was good news in itself, but the best news is that the orphanage has agreed to arrange for a tutor for Ling within the month!! That is wonderful news! Thank you Lord!

Almost a teenager

Her birthday came and went. I would have loved to have given her a birthday hug. She turned 12 on March 21st. Almost a teenager. We did have the opportunity to send her a birthday box, which we did. We mailed it on March 6th and according to the tracking slip, it was received at its destination on March 16th. Not sure if that means it made it to her specific orphanage address, or if it was just received in a general location within China. Either way, we are trusting in the Lord that it made its way to her. We were told that she needed and wanted clothes, so we sent 4 pair of Capri's style pants, 4 matching shirts, a Hello Kitty shirt, and a light jacket. We also sent 2 more disposable cameras, a jewelry box craft kit, a picture album with over 120 pictures of family and friends, a photo magnet with the families picture in it, a birthday card with all of our signatures, 2 reading magnifiers, a Happy Birthday flashing button/pin, and a beautiful necklace that a friend of ours sent us for her. In the photo album, we placed pictures of family members holding "Happy Birthday" signs with pictures of BD cakes/balloons etc. so that she could see what we were saying without needing a translator to tell her.

Finally a LID

Well, I guess I should update. We finally have our LID (log in date). March 5th. This is about 30 days later than we had anticipated. Our agency says it is partially due to the Chinese New Year and the subsequent holiday closing of the CCAA office. But, its all in the Lords timing anyways, and not our own.

Birthday box

Sorry it has been a while since a post. Still haven't heard from our agency in regards to a log in date (LID). Not really worried about it, just very curious. We should have had an LID several weeks ago. On a brighter note, we mailed out a box on Saturday that contained items for Ling's birthday which is the 21st of this month. She will be 12. I printed several "signs" that said happy birthday etc. and had the kids hold them while I took a picture. I did the same for Carolyn and I. We put these pictures as well as over 100 more into an album for the box. We also sent several outfits, some visual magnifiers, a small craft kit, a flashing "happy birthday pin", a necklace from a friend, 2 more disposable cameras and a few gifts for the orphanage director. It weighed 12 pounds and 4 ounces. It actually cost more to mail it than the value of the contents, but that's ok. We also included a birthday card that we all signed. I know that she probably cannot read any of the words on the pictures or on the card, but she will get the idea as the card and the signs had birthday cakes and balloons etc. on them. We really wanted to send a home movie DVD (in the event she had access to a DVD player), but we dint have time to compose one. If all goes well, she should have the box a few days before her birthday. I know we took a chance on sending her clothes, but Carolyn did a lot of research using Ling's latest measurements to estimate her clothing size.

Great News!

Found out this morning that Ling received her care package box!!!! Thank you Lord!! We have been worried that she had not!!! Awesome! Awesome!! Awesome!!! We can now send her a box for her birthday which is in March!!

A small delay

Good news and bad news. First the bad news - I was informed Friday that the timeline for special needs from china is now 5-7 months to travel after LID. That would put our tentative travel between July and August and not between May and June which I originally thought. It now takes 2 to 4 months to review our dossier and roughly 3 months to travel aftewards. I guess the good news is that we now have more time to prepare and more time to raise the remaining finances. Oh well, it's all in the Lords timing :)

Finally DTC!!

The Lord is my strength and my song; He has given me victory. This is my God, and I will praise Him - my father's God, and I will exalt Him! Exodus 15:2

Finally, we can breath a sigh of relief! We are officially DTC today! For those of you who are not familiar with that term, it means we are Dossier To China. Our dossier consists of all the documents that are needed by China to process our request to adopt. We started collecting and processing these documents in early September, 2009. There are 15 original documents that were processed at local and federal levels as well as copies of passports, extra passport pictures, multiple signed agreements, and six family photographs. On another wonderful note, we have also received word this week that we are the recipients of two additional grants! How awesome and faithful is our God!

Some new pictures

The dear lady from Spain has sent us more pictures of Ling. Here are three of the better pictures. She actually sent about 10 or so and some are as recent 30-45 days ago. She looks so mature! It's hard to believe she is only 11 years old. The picture of her in the blue sweater is reportedly from November of 2009. The one where she is sitting on the side of the bed is from March, 2009. The picture of her in the white pullover is from February, 2009. These dates might not be accurate, but are probably close.

So far away

Here is a map of China for those who are unfamiliar. Ling is in the Jiangxi province. Bella was from Louyang in the Henan Province (just above Jiangxi).

Blessed are those who trust in the Lord and have made the Lord their hope and confidence. Jeremiah 17:7

We brought our need to Him, and He answered. We have been contacted by yet another grant agency (Christian based) that has generously agreed to give us a $4,000 no interest loan that we don’t have to pay back until the middle of 2011!! This is another example to how God will take care of us, if we but ask! Our 15 documents have been priority mailed to the Chinese Embassy in Washington DC and to the Chinese Consulate in New York for authentication. We hope to have them back in 10-15 days. We can then overnight them to our agency to send off to China!

Seeing is beleiving

We are very blessed to have received a video from a dear lady who traveled to Ling's orphanage in 2008. She sent us about 30 minutes of video of the orphanage with over 5 minutes of Ling included! The video that she sent on DVD is actually much clearer than it appears on our blog. I have trimmed several minutes of the video and posted it here. The video shows Ling playing with and comforting several small children. It is such a blessing to see her caring for others in her situation. We have been told that she is a very loving and caring young lady and we can see that in the video. Carolyn and I debated if Ling had some sort of "tick". If you watch her closely, it appears that her head "jerks/twitches" somewhat. I think we came to the conclusion that it was probably that she was just facing a very large window and she was "fighting" the glare. One of the ladies that has visited the orphanage several times this year says that she refuses to wear sunglasses.

Pictures

Here are a few more pictures that we have of Ling. She looks sooooo skinny! These almost look like two different girls, but we have been assured they are both Ling. I think they are take about a year apart (both pics are about a year old)

Fingerprints and answered prayer!

We went to the USCIS office in Columbus to have our fingerprints recorded on the 17^th and all went well! Another answered prayer to report! We received a wonderful phone call on December 16^th from an organization that we had applied to for assistance! They will be sending our agency $3,000 on our behalf to go towards our expenses! Praise the Lord! He truly knows what we need when we need it!! We had a balance of $1,300 that needed paid before we could send in our dossier, and now we have it! We have our Consulate and Embassy documents ready to go for the final authentication. We hope to have our USCIS approval toward the end of the week or early next week. When we have that, we will need to have a copy of it notarized, taken to the county courthouse for authentication, and then my plans are hand delivering it to the Secretary of State for their certification. Then it will be ready to send to the Consulate. Once we have the USCIS clearance document back from the Consulate, our dossier should be ready to go to China. If (and that’s a big “if”) we can get “logged-in” before January 10 ^th, we wont have to file an extension. The Lord will truly have to work a miracle for that to happen.

Just a quick post, but another answered prayer. God has provided the money we need to send our dossier paperwork clear up to the Secretary's of State level. Just like He said He would do!

Inside the Orphanage

Over the last few days, a nice lady has sent me more pictures of Ling's orphanage and surrounding Province. The orphanage is a once abandoned hotel. It looks clean, but according to the pictures I have seen, looks very bleak and somewhat colorless. I am sure they do what they can for these kids, but I wished they had a little money to spend on pictures etc. to make it a little nicer for them. I have stared the certification process for all of our paperwork that must go to the state and federal government as well as the Consulate and Embassy for authentication. Its a huge process, but taken one step at a time, is manageable. Carolyn and I are praying for the money to finish this part of the process. The next time I post, I hope to be able to report that God has provided again :)