Happy Birthday to Me!

What a day today has been!  It started with breakfast in bed from my two sweet girls, was followed by the sweetest card a wife could ever want from her hubby (LOVE him SO!), a great morning with my other 9 kids at the preschool, and some of the BEST NEWS EVER!!!

So as part of the Home Study and Approval process, there is a series of questions that you must answer - kind of an interview on paper.  Depending  on how you answer these questions, the China and/or US Governments may require prospective parents to have a psychological evaluation.  This includes, an IQ test, a personality test, and a clinical session with a licensed psychologist.  Who wants to have to do that?  Not to mention it would cost us an additional $1600 a pop!  But, God is good (yes, I would still know that He is good either way) and we DON'T have to do that!  Yay!!!!!!

ALSO, we heard from our Family Coordinator at America World that China had received our Electronic Acceptance and request to adopt this little man.  AND we were issued our Pre-Approval today!!  The letter they sent is actually dated today - March 25, 2015 - My Birthday!!!  What this means is that the China Centre for Children's Welfare and Adoption has reviewed all the information that we sent them with our request to adopt, and based on all the information that they have right now, are accepting our request and agrees to handle and process our adoption of this particular child!!!  That means that barring something totally unforeseen HE IS OURS!!!!!!

To top it all off, I got a call from our most fabulous HomeStudy Coordinator (who happens to go to my church and is becoming one of my bestest friends :)) asking if we could come early to church tonight to have our first official meeting!!!  Of course we can!!!!!!!

Can this birthday GET any better???????  I pray your day has been as much of a blessing to you as mine has been to me!

All Docs are IN!

Well, we are ready to go!  We have gotten all documentation and filled out all our forms.  Our Social Worker got the last bit of DSS Clearances today!  We are ready!  Our Home Study will officially start very soon!  We will have a joint meeting with our Social Worker, then she will meet one-on-one with each of us, then the home visit.  After that she will write her report and send it off to her boss and to our agency to approve.  Once it is approved, we will apply with US Immigration for approval to bring our boy home!

In the meantime, we are getting all of our other forms and documents certified and authenticated.  What a process!!!!  It has to go to the NC Secretary of State (who has already rejected 3 of our documents), then the US Department of State, then the Chinese Embassy!  Each of them will give each document their own stamp of approval and then send them back to us.  Once we have all of our docs certified and authenticated, the completed Home Study, and approval from HomeLand, we will send the packet (called the Dossier) to China for their official approval.

There is still plenty of red tape between us and him, but it does feel good to know that we are well into the process at this point.  It is nice to know that we are basically waiting on other people to pass the ball back to us.  We do still have a few books we have to read and other trainings we have to "attend" online, but we are marching forward at full speed, and each new item checked off the list gets us one step closer to our son!  Praise God!!!

I Had No Idea...

When I began to pray over this experience 8 or 9 months ago, I told you I was praying for Joyful Obedience, hence the name of our blog. :)

As I prayed, I prayed for myself - that if I was wrong, and this journey was not one to which God was calling our family, that I would respond with Joyful Obedience and walk away from it and let it go.  I prayed for Jodie - that if I wasn't wrong, and this journey was one to which God was calling our family, that he would respond with Joyful Obedience and be on the same page, quickly get on board and get this ball rolling.  I prayed for Samantha and Georgia - that they would be happy about our decision and God's call on our family, and that they would love their brother as if he'd always been part of our family.  I prayed for our families - that they would be supportive and accepting of our new son, no matter his medical condition, his skin color, his history, or his country of origin.  I prayed that we would all Joyfully Obey and love this child as if he were our biological kin.

As I prayed, I quite often found myself praying that "Everyone Involved" (trying to quickly mention all of the above in one fell swoop) in our adoption story would respond with Joyful Obedience.  I had no idea that I was praying for many more people than just those mentioned above.

As support of our journey has begun to trickle in, it is becoming quite clear to me that "Everyone Involved" will encompass way more than myself, Jodie, our girls, and our extended family.   We have received logistical support - whether it be medical advice concerning our little guy, or just rushing paperwork through a government system.  We have several people who have willingly sacrificed their time to write a reference letter (or 2 in some cases).  We have received financial and prayer support from many outside of that little group, and we have been so very humbled.

As we drove home from visiting with family yesterday, it struck me how God uses everyone to complete one of His missions.  And make no mistake, this is a mission.  I can't share much about our son (due to the fact that it isn't officially official yet, and due to the fact that our girls still don't know about him specifically), but what I can share with you is the scene in one of the pictures we received of him.  Picture a little boy sitting on a table playing with a toy.  Right next to him on that very same table - a statue of Buddha.  Yes, this is a mission.  God has a special plan for this sweet boy, and I am so thankful that we will be part of it.  And I will continue to pray for "Everyone Involved" in his homecoming.

Thank you all for your support.  It means more to us than you will ever know.

He Who has begun this work will finish it!

So, we have finally submitted the application to be part of America World Adoption's China program.    We have been approved and spent the weekend filling out forms and getting them ready to send in.  Along with them, we had to send our initial program payment.  Now things get a  little scary.  It's all been super exciting and thrilling so far, but then the reality of how much this journey is going to cost sets in.  And it is scary!  Especially since things are moving so fast.  This process usually takes 12-15 months for a family.  That is from application to coming home, babe in hand.  For us, because we have already accepted the referral for a child, and because we have already been working on parts of our Home Study requirements, this may not take nearly as long.  On one hand that is WONDERFUL!  I cannot wait to meet my son and bring him here, to his FOREVER home.  On another hand, OH MY WORD!!!  WHERE is this money going to come from?

Knowing that this particular payment would be coming soon, I spent some time last week trying to get creative with our funds, making room in the budget to write this check.  Then I got a text from Jodie.  He had received his anniversary bonus!  Score!!!  But it wasn't enough to cover the entirety of this payment.  So I kept plowing though our budget in my mind.  Hmmm.....  Then we received a card from a very dear friend.  In it was a check - a gift to get us started on our most amazing journey.  And there it was.  Nearly every penny fell from Above!  Wow!  Don't you just love God?!?!  Amazing!!!

So we wrote that check and sent it to the agency.  Today, we were officially welcomed into the AWAA China Program!!!!  Another milestone, another step closer to meeting our son!!!

This all leads me to the links to the right of this page.  There are 2 links under the heading "Want to help us bring home our boy?" that you can click on if you feel led to join us on our journey to China in a financial way.  The first one is a link to our agency's donation fund.  You can give directly to our agency on our behalf.  You will get an email confirming your gift.  While this is a non-profit agency, they do not give tax advise - whether or not you are able write gifts to this fund off on your taxes is between you and you CPA.  The funds you donate on our behalf will go towards any payments we will make directly to America World.  If there is money left over after our adoption is complete, the excess funds will stay with AWAA and benefit other adoptive families and orphans around the world.  The second link is our Go Fund Me account.  These donations will come directly to us.  They will help pay for things like medical bills associated with the adoption, payments we have to make directly to the US and China Governments, our travel to go get him, background checks, etc.  We will need to get clothing and furniture for our little man, and he will have a plethora of medical visits upon his homecoming as well.

Our next payment will be due any day now.  It will be $2000 for our Home Study Fee.  I can't wait to see how God will provide for this and all the payments to come!

Thank you again for joining us on this journey.  Your support, whether financial or not, means the world to our family!

Yes He Is!

I am so very excited to report that we accepted the referral for a sweet little man in China.  I still can't reveal a whole lot about him since, technically, we haven't even begun the process yet.  But know, that he is on his way!!!  He is already loved very much!  We are thrilled!!!

But SHHHHHH!  The girls don't know this part yet!

What I will tell you is that rather than living in an orphanage, he is being raised by a foster family.  Please join us in prayer for this family, and for our little guy.  As soon as I am allowed to, I will post a pic for you all to see!

Green Lights all the Way...

So the night we told the girls that we were going to adopt a little brother for them, there were so many questions.  Where is he?  How old is he?  What will he look like?  When can we get him?  The one that got me was when Samantha asked if we would be able to name him.  I told her that chances are that he is already alive.  That he is in his country, waiting for us to find him and come pick him up.  I told her that he would already have a name, and that maybe we would keep that name for his middle name and then give him a name to go by.  She started rattling off names left and right.  This family member.  That family member.  It wasn't long before she was out of men in our family whose name hadn't already been taken by a cousin.  Then she reminded me about how my mom had traced her family all the way back to the Mayflower, and that we could go all the way back to then to find a name for him.  She said, "What about CHRISTOPHER?"

Why did that catch me off guard?  Well, I will tell you!  When an agency gets a referral file from the CCCWA in China, sometimes they will give the child a name to put on their website.  It means nothing to the child.  Most parents don't keep the name.  I call it the child's "Agency Name."  Our little man came to us from America World Adoptions with the agency name of "CHRISTOPHER!"

On this particular night, we had not yet decided that he was our son.  We hadn't accepted the referral and told AWAA that we wanted to bring him home.  All we knew was that we had 1 more week to decide and many more things about his file to consider.  And, we knew his name was CHRISTOPHER.Lights all the Way

We Finally Told the Girls!

Today, we have a meeting with our Pediatrician to go over some things with her.  She will help us sort through all the medical issues we may come across as we pursue the adoption of a child from China.  She will help us determine which conditions we can handle, which ones are fixable or treatable, and which ones we will need not pursue.  She will also look specifically at this file that we are reviewing and tell us what her thoughts are on this little guy in particular.

Also, as part of this process, everyone living in the home has to have a clean bill of health from their doctor.  This includes having a negative TB test.  So, we decided to take care of all of this in one appointment.  Last night, we were telling the girls that we had this conference with their doctor and that they would have to come with us and get their TB tests placed.  Poor Samantha.  She immediately went into panic mode, thinking something was wrong with her or Georgia.  If not, why would we need to meet with a children's doctor?  She's too smart for her own good sometimes.  She just couldn't get her brain wrapped around the fact that there was nothing wrong with anyone, and remained very concerned.

So, in an effort to put her mind at ease, we decided to let them in on the secret we had been keeping from them since November!  They are over the moon excited!!!  Thrilled to have a baby brother on the way.  There is so much more to this story, but I just can't share it yet - too many details about the little guy whose not yet ours!  Besides, Samantha wants to write her own little blurb about her journey.