Getting Closer

Things are still moving along in adoption land.  Although I still haven't received any official updated information on Hannah, I did sign up to get the newsletter from the home where she was living and receiving medical treatment in Beijing and the April newsletter had her listed as one of the children who received surgery that month!  You can see the newsletter here. If you scroll down, she is listed as "Jaclyn Ruth," the name the two families who sponsored her care while there decided to give her! While you're over on that web site, nose around a bit. This is an amazing ministry to orphans in China! They also have so many needs on an ongoing basis. They need one time donations of various items, regular donations for operating costs, and monthly donations to sponsor specific children.  Someday I hope to be able to sponsor this place in a big way - they are the ones who began to repair my daughter's cleft and also gave her a loving and safe environment to grow in.  They have no idea who I am, but they have ministered to me in a huge way by loving my daughter. If you are looking for a ministry to support or for a way to care for orphans short of adopting one of your own, I hope you will consider supporting them! Anyway, as far as surgery goes, in February, we were told she was being transferred to this home to get a palate repair surgery, so I assume that is what she had done, but I won't know until we either get an official update or until we are in China! As of yesterday, her picture is no longer on the "Babies" page, so I think she has been transferred back to her orphanage to await adoption.

ETA: I just got an e-mail from our adoption agency stating that our Article 5 has been issued and will be delivered to the CCCWA (the Chinese agency that governs all adoption).  Once they have this document, they will have everything they need to issue our travel dates!!!!  Yea - God is good!

A recent family picture on a field trip to the Dallas World Aquarium.

Me and 2 giant crabs!

As far as travel is concerned, we did get our visas!!  We got a letter that we also forwarded to the US Consulate in Guangzhou and we are expecting to be issued an Article 5 tomorrow from them.  Once we have that document, we can request travel dates from China!! We have been told that once we request travel dates, we will receive an invitation to travel in 2-4 weeks, and can expect to travel 10-21 days after receiving that invitation!  That puts us in the end of June or beginning of July for travel.  We both have our heads and hearts stuck on June 27 to travel for some reason. (We've been told we are most likely to leave on a Wednesday.)  Please pray that everything comes through quickly and that we are able to leave on the 27th.  We have tickets on hold for that day using our miles to travel.

Isn't that so cool???

We have almost finished Hannah's room, too! I still have to sew curtains, and we have a friend coming over to help paint a tree with owls and birds next week. Once it is done, I'll post pictures.

Ever wondered about all that "adoption paperwork" people talk about? This is a picture of my paperwork file.  It is expandable, but I don't think it could expand more if we tried! And this doesn't include all the things we've mailed off to this agency or that office!  This isn't to scare anyone off, though - it is totally worth it.

Finally, I heard something that basically sums up how I feel about adoption and orphan care.  Perhaps you've heard about the book, Kisses from Katie.  This book was written by a young woman with a true heart for missions, people, and orphans.  After moving to Uganda to do missions work, she started her own organization to help Ugandan children have their basic needs and educational needs met.  Here is a quote from her book description:

To further her reach into the needs of Ugandans, Katie established Amazima Ministries. The ministry matches orphaned children with sponors worldwide. Each sponsor’s $300/year provides schooling, school supplies, three hot meals a day, minor medical care, and spiritual encouragement. Katie expected to have forty children in the program; she had signed up 150 by January 2008; today it sponsors over 400. Another aspect of the ministry is a feeding program created for the displaced Karamojong people—Uganda’s poorest citizens. The program feeds lunch to over 1,200 children Monday-Friday and sends them home with a plate of food; it also offers basic medical care, Bible study, and general health training.

Anyway, I was watching videos on  YouTube of her and I ran across this short interview clip:

It is only 3 minutes long - please listen to it.  It completely sums up my feelings about adoption, the spiritual significance of adoption, the Christian's responsibility, and I love, love, love what Katie says when asked to speak to the person who is on the fence, but has been considering adoption!  

I plan on buying her book for my kindle to read on the flight over to China - if I can manage to wait that long! :-)

Birthdays

We have had a few birthdays in our family!  At the end of April, I turned 35.  That's right - I'm not afraid to admit my age! :) At least not yet...

Jerry brought home roses for my birthday.

I requested Saltgrass Steakhouse for my birthday lunch, so we went after church with my parents! It was so very yummy - I had to get a picture so I could remember how yummy it was.

My children were with me in the jewelry store a few weeks before my birthday, and since I am all baby girl all the time right now, I of course, had to look at the little girl jewelry before I could leave.  I saw a little girl necklace that was the shape of a shell with a small diamond in the center.  I exclaimed how great that would be for Hannah since her name means "beautiful shell." Lo and behold, he told Jerry about this necklace so my boys and Jerry went and got me the necklace for my birthday!  Technically it is a gift for Hannah, but it is so incredibly sweet that Aaron remembered that I exclaimed over it and told Jerry and they went and found it for me.  A perfect birthday.

Then Aaron turned 9! I cannot believe my firstborn is already 9.  Time really does go so quickly.  He and Ethan alternate years having a party, so this year he just had a family over for some play and pizza.  He requested a Resees cake, so I made him a chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting with chopped Resees on top.  It was amazingly good.  So good I think we have to throw out the rest of it so that I do not eat every last bite...

He decided to spike his hair into a mohawk just for his big day.  Lovely, no?

Finally, one of my grandmothers (my mom's mom) turns 80 this weekend! Her whole family is throwing a huge (like over 100 guests!) surprise party for her. I really hope she doesn't have a heart attack from such a shock at her age... ;) Anyway, with all the adoption stuff going on right now, there was no way we could make a trip to Wisconsin to be there with her, but I did have the privilege of making her a chair back cover for her big day! I embroidered "Birthday Girl" on one side and "Kiss me, I'm 80!" on the other.  I hope she likes it!

Hannah's Name

Our daughter will have quite a name! Hannah Bei Jia Marie plus a last name, too.  In the last post, I had a picture of a wall hanging a friend gave me with Hannah's name meaning.  I thought I'd share here.

Hannah:

• Language/Cultural Origin: Hebrew
• Inherent Meaning: Gracious
• Spiritual Connotation: Compassionate
• Psalm 145:8, "The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and great in mercy."

Bei Jia: 

• The name given to our daughter at 1 day old when she entered the orphanage
• Meaning: Shell/Valuables,  Beautiful/Excellent
• Her nick-name in China is Jia Jia

Marie:

• Language/Cultural Origin: Hebrew / Egyptian
• Inherent Meaning: Bitter / Wished for Child
• Spiritual Connotation: Delivered
• Isaiah 38:17, "Indeed it was for my own peace that I had such great bitterness; but You have lovingly delivered my soul from the pit of corruption, for you have cast all my sins behind your back."

Even though this name might be a bit of a mouthful for a little girl, Hannah is the name we chose for a girl when we were pregnant the first time and kept it as our top choice through each pregnancy.  Because my name has "hanna" as its ending, it is special to me as well.  We also wanted to keep her Chinese name, even though it wasn't given to her by her Chinese parents.  She will have so little to look to when she starts to question who she is and where she came from that we want to keep as much of what she has as we can. We also gave her an American middle name for a couple of reasons.  First, that is my middle name, my mom's middle name, and my grandmother's first name.  That is special!  Also, when Hannah gets older, we wanted her to be able to choose which middle name she prefers to use.  If she wants to identify with her Chinese heritage, she has that.  But if she just feels American, she can drop the Chinese name.  However, legally, she'll have both - something I hope she appreciates some day.  It was interesting doing the research on the name Marie.  I had always heard it meant "Bitter," which I must confess is not my favorite meaning.  But I kept seeing that it was Hebrew, with Egyptian origin, so I decided to look at the Egyptian meaning.  When I saw that the Egyptian meaning was "Wished for child," I could not help but think it is absolutely perfect for our daughter.  We have wished for her through this whole 4-year process of adoption, and I have wished for her for 20 years - ever since God impressed upon me that I would have a daughter from China someday.  I hope she will come to realize just how much she was longed for by us!

Adoption Progress

I did not realize just how many steps there were to the end of this process!  Since I last updated things here, we did finally get our immigration approval.  Once we had that, we applied to the Department of Homeland Security to classify Hannah as an immediate relative, and we got that provisional approval today!  We also filled another gov't form and sent it off - I don't even remember what that was for! Now that we have our provisional approval, we can apply for our visas to enter China! This involves sending a packet of information through a courier to the Chinese Consulate in Houston.  We also have a whole packet of information to get notarized and send off to our adoption agency, including travel releases, placement agreements, travel group information release forms.  We will get that notarized tomorrow and send it, along with a copy of our approval that we got today back to the agency. I think we are also going to get our will notarized before we jet off half way around the world! :)  In addition to all of this, Jerry started some vaccinations he never had that were recommended.  He isn't feeling great today after starting that yesterday, but that is to be expected! Fortunately for me, I had a whole round of "weird" vaccinations when I was planning to travel to Africa at age 17, so I'm spared most of that right now! It still looks like travel will happen sometime in June.

We still haven't gotten any new information on Hannah.  It really seems like a long time since we got the last update on her in February, but I am trying to remember that the caregivers in the orphanages there have so much to do and are truly doing their best.  Now that we are getting closer to travel, I know that we will get an update just before going, so that helps! I have gotten involved in a Yahoo group of people who have/are adopting from the same orphanage as we are, and when people travel to get their little ones, they are looking for Hannah to see if they can snap a new picture for us! One is there tomorrow and another in the beginning of May.

Some of my friends gave me a baby shower a bit over a week ago! It was so amazing and I felt so loved by so many people.  Most of the pictures that were taken on my camera didn't turn out - it was passed around to a few different people - but a friend who is a great photographer took a TON of photos and will be giving them all to me soon.  Here are a few from what I have:

The amazing brunch - minus the hot dishes that weren't set out yet!

The beautiful cake my friend Sandy made!

I got so many gifts that Hannah is set on clothing for a while now.

One friend made a sheet with Hannah's name, meaning, and spiritual connotations - so precious.

This gift was "wrapped" in a watering can for Hannah! What a clever idea!

Me and my beautiful mother!

This last picture is of a painting my friend Anna made (the other lady in the photo is Anna).  It was her prayer journal as she prayed through how God felt about adoption.  It is amazing!  This painting was displayed at an arts festival that had the theme, "Discarded...Reclaimed," which is a perfect picture of adoption, don't you think?  Anna made a video of the process for this piece which can be viewed here: Undefiled Religion.  It is worth watching.  This is a prayer process every Christian should go through.

Ethan is 7!

An alternate title for this post could be, "Wow! Time sure flies..."

Ethan posing with his Lego cake! He really liked his cake this year!

Ethan and Aaron alternate years having a birthday party with friends over, and this year was Ethan's turn.  (Andrew and Hannah will alternate, too.  This cuts way down on my party bill...)  He really, really wanted to have his party at the park this year, so that is what we planned to do.  When we sent out the invitations, the forecast was for a high of 70 and sunshine all day.  With 3 days until party day, the forecast was for a high in the 50's with 100% chance of rain. :( I made an executive decision to move the party to our house.  The problem with that being that I hadn't planned for any activities or things to occupy the kids during the party since we would be at the park! What on earth was I going to do with 10 children for 2 hours???  Thanks to Pinterest, I knew we would do a Lego Party.  (Yea for Pinterest to the rescue!!)

I downloaded a Lego font to print up the decorations and prizes.  It was so cute!

We ended up with a Lego cake, that was pretty awesome, Lego games, and Lego prize bags!

Lego Bunting  for decorations!  Ethan thought this was the best - it is still up! :)

Lego toss...

This game was hilarious to watch! The kids had to suck Legos to the end of their straw and drop them in their bowls - no hands allowed!  The poor, two girls - they weren't bold enough to shove their way in between the boys to get more Legos and lost. :(

A row of mom's watching the fun.  I am so blessed to have good friends with children the same age as mine!!

Blowing out the candles!

Overall, the party was a success, but I didn't have enough planned to fill the time.  There was some wild play in the un-filled time, but no one got hurt, thank goodness.

Long Overdue

On January 17 we got a very unexpected phone call and e-mail.  Anyone who has followed this blog for any length of time knows that we started the process of adopting a daughter from China almost 4 years ago.  Due to many factors in China, the wait for a healthy baby has grown and grown to the point that people who are getting their babies now logged in their paperwork with China over 5 years ago, and the wait is still getting longer.  Almost a year ago, we started praying about whether we should expand our application to include some known medical issues - partly due to the long wait for healthy babies, but also because God had been working on our hearts to show us that no child is "perfect" and the babies on the waiting list deserved a family just as much as the "healthy" babies.  Long story short, we submitted a revised application in November and started the process of updating our immigration paperwork after being told we would likely receive a match based on our new application in 6-18 months.  Just over 6 weeks later, we got a phone call telling us that our agency had a file for a little girl that they wanted us to review!  What, what??  We were shocked!  Jerry knew pretty quickly that this was our daughter, and I spent 2 days praying before I had total peace.  On January 19th we accepted her file!  Of course, we were not allowed to share our joy until we had confirmation from China and we happened to accept this girl right at Chinese New Year, so all of their offices were closed for a week!

These two pictures were included in the file we first received.  Hannah is 8 months old in these pictures.  In the second  one, you can see the swelling still visible from her lip repair 2 months before these pictures were taken.

I cannot believe that I waited so long to share this here, but I have been sharing on Facebook.  We have been in a whirlwind of paperwork since accepting her file.  We have updated our home study, renewed our application with immigration, had our fingerprinting redone for The Department of Homeland Security, put together a care package to send to Hannah, and begun to research what we will need to do to address her immediate medical needs when we bring her home.  Because of her cleft lip/cleft palate, she will need several surgeries.  We are hoping we will be able to put off her first one long enough for her to bond with us before putting her through so much pain, but really until we have her home and have her evaluated by a cleft team, we will not have any answers.

We received an update with pictures of Hannah at 12 months.  She is 14 months old now, but we don't have any newer pictures than this one.

The best estimate we have right now is that we will be going to China sometime this summer to get Hannah.  Once we have approval from immigration, we will have a better idea about timing!  Hopefully I can keep this better updated as things start to progress.  I have been thankful to have a written account of the process here, and now I have gaps!

What I Am Learning

One thing I have learned in my walk with Christ is that I am never done learning.  This is discouraging at times because I wonder if I will ever truly be Christ-like.  But it is also so very encouraging! No matter how badly I mess up, how far I wander, or how long I go on ignoring Christ's voice calling me back to him, he is still waiting to teach me some more.  He doesn't give up on me!

So I know it isn't really "New Year" anymore, but it is Chinese New Year today; and since half my heart is in China anyway, this is still appropriate for today!  I was reading in a devotional by Sarah Young called Jesus Calling and I was struck by this (to be read as Christ speaking directly to you),

 "Come to Me with a teachable spirit, eager to be changed.  A close walk with Me is a life of continual newness.  Do not cling to old ways as you step into a new year.  Instead, seek My Face with an open mind, knowing that your journey with Me involves being transformed by the renewing of your mind."

Wow.  I cling to my old ways with fierceness!  It is time to let go of some old ways and be willing to allow Christ to change me through the renewing of my mind.

The next page also talked about bringing my mind back to Him for refreshing and renewal.  I cannot let the thoughts of the trials of the day bog me down, but rather focus on the Lord.  He is my strength!

Psalm 105:4, "Look to the LORD and his strength; seek his face always."