Waiting for Baby Girl!

Not much has happened since we were officially logged in with China in March.  We have had two referral lists come out since then and did not get a call, nor did we expect to.  The 2nd list came out at the end of May, while Robbie and I were on our first ever real vacation alone (well, we did take one vacation alone almost 4 years, but my dear sis got vertigo after our first night and we had to come home!!!  So, that one really doesn't count!).  We were out of the county in Cabo, Mexico and I have to admit that I was a little anxious hoping to receive an email with the face of our baby girl.  But, it didn't happen and in my head, I knew it wasn't going to happen, but . . . the heart was longing!

I can't help but think that right now, we have a baby girl somewhere out there waiting for us.  For the first time in this process, I feel like she is alive, already conceived or already born.  The kids and I were praying for baby girl a couple of weeks ago and my emotions got the best of me!  As we were praying, I was asking God to let her know that her forever family is coming for her, that we love and for someone to tell her now, to sing to her now about the deep, deep love of Jesus.  The thought of having a baby and not being able to get to her can be an overload on my emotional heart.  BUT, it sure helps to know that my Daddy loves her even more that we do and that He is taking care of her while we wait to find her! 

Oh, how we love you already baby girl!

We are IN!!

Dear Family and Friends,

We wanted to share some exciting news with you, especially those of you who are not on Facebook! We just received an email letting us know that we have an official "Log In Date" for China! This means that they have received our dossier (all our official paperwork) and that we can now receive a referral (a profile of a child matched with our family)! It's kind of like we are officially pregnant, but still have a ways to go before we see our baby girl!

From here, we could wait as long as 12 months to receive a referral, though we are hoping it is a lot sooner than that based on the number of matches we have seen in the past months. Once we receive a referral, we have 4-6 months to wait before we actually travel to China. All in all, we still have a long way to go!

How can you pray for us?

1. Please pray that God will prepare our hearts and our home for the child that He has waiting for us!

2. Please pray that God would protect this child and care for her in our absence. We would love for her to be in a foster family right now, so that she is getting the best care possible!

3. Please pray that God would miraculously supply the remaining funds to pay for our adoption. We have currently paid $11,000 and will need at least $28,000 more before we can travel. We have applied for a couple grants and are applying for more right now! Please ask God to show favor on our applications!

4. Please pray for God to ready our 5 bio kids as well! They are so excited right now, but the transition could be hard on everyone, especially William!

 

5. Please pray for the birth mom of our child and birth moms around the globe who have made the gut wrenching decision to give up their babies.  My prayer is that they would be blessed beyond measure and come to know the saving grace of Jesus Christ!

Thank you, thank you for sharing in our joy!!!

Finger prints and MO police report!

On February 9, Rob and I took all the kiddos and headed to Nashville for some adoption paper chasing business.  First off, we navigated through Nashville morning rush hour traffic and made it to the county clerks office right at 8:00 am.  We made a last minute decision to get all 5 kids a passport "just in case"!  Not that we plan on taking all of them with us to China, because we don't, but just to have them on hand in case we find a vacation deal or mission opportunity where we can or need to take everyone with us.  The only hiccup here was that I didn't have Hambone's real birthcertificate, only the one that the hospital issued us.  Poor thing felt very left out and a little confused since her jokester of a dad kept telling her that we weren't sure if she was really born to us since we couldn't prove it with a passport!  This was clearly no time to joke!

On the way home from Nashville, Rob just happened to navigate right by a "church bus" dealership so that he could test drive the massive 12 passenger van!  I politely offered to keep the kiddos in the "smaller" suburban so he could make a quick trip out of it and get us all back to school in a timely manner.  To say that he liked the big, ugly van is an understatement!  It looks like we will need a few more kiddos to fill it up though!! (No, we didn't buy one {yet}, but I think it has been added to the savings budget!  I'm voting for a pretty red one though!)

Then, just last week, we received word that my police report from my very short lived stint in MO came back clear.  Our agency had to issue us a new Hague approval letter, our social worker had to write an addendum to our home study and now we are waiting for all these updates to arrive in our mailbox so that we can mail them to USCIS where we will, hopefully, be cleared quickly for international adoption.

Next on the list:
1. Mail all updates to USCIS
2. Receive USCIS approval in mail (might be a couple of weeks from when I mail our updates out)
3. Get the updated letters county, state and US State certified; get USCIS approval US State Certified
4. Submit dossier to China!
5. Receive a Log In Date (LID)
6. Wait approximately 12-18 months for a referral
7. Travel approximately 4-6 months after receiving a referral.

A Little Bummed

We just received a call from our agency that the USCIS is requesting a background check for me from my short lived college stint in Missouri.  Our home study shows that I lived there, but did not request a background check, so we now have 45 days to request a background check, MO to process the request, mail the background check to us, update our home study, and mail the requested information back to USCIS. 

We are a bit bummed about the delay in the process and certain delay in our approval, but we rest assured that God has a purpose for this very minor glitch.  Isn't it funny how we read last night that Paul prayed for God to give the church in Ephesus "the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better."  And we prayed this for our family, that we may poses wisdom from God and the knowledge to see things the way God sees them.  I know God doesn't see this as a set back, but as part of His master plan to bring our little girl home!  Here we go for another month or so of waiting for papers so that we can wait for a referral!! 

Whole-heartedly trusting in God's perfect timing and plan! 

(it just took me a few minutes to remember to do so!)

Adoption Update

So many people have asked where we are in the adoption process!  It made me realize that I have slacked in my blogging world these past few months.  So much else has taken priority that it is hard to go back and figure out where I left off on here! Over Christmas break, I spent a couple of days taking all of our paperwork to get county and state certified.  I mailed these papers to our agency on January 8 to be authenticated at the US Secretary of State office and Chinese Embassy.  We also mailed our USCIS form over Christmas and have about a month and half more get fingerprinted and to wait for them to send us our approval letter.  Once we receive the approval letter, we will have it notarized, county and state certified and then mail it to our agency to go through the DC authentication process as well.  Then, our Dossier will be complete and be ready to mail to China!! Once it is processed in China, we will receive our Log In Date (LID) and be ready to wait for a referral!

We were just told that a referral might take anywhere from 12-18 months after our LID, which is better than the 2 years we have been hearing lately.  I am amazed at how God is working in our hearts lately!  6 months ago, we wanted to wait a couple of years before receiving a referral.  And, now, we both are so ready to bring our baby home that waiting will be much harder than we expected! God is stirring our hearts and providing for us in so many ways, that I can't help but praise Him for the love He is showing us through this process! He's in this in such a big way and it blows my mind to think that He chose us for this great journey to adoption!