LOA!!!!!!!

We finally got our LOA at 103 days! It took longer than we hoped but we finally have it!!! I am overjoyed that the process is finally moving along again. We have to apply for our I800 (another form from the USCIS) and get our Visas and wait for the LOC (a new step of paperwork required by the Hague) but at least we can press on to climb that next paperwork mountain between us and Hannah.

I was reading this scripture passage from Isaiah 30 this morning: "For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, 'In returning and rest you shall be saved, in quietness and trust shall be your strength.' ... Therefore, the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord God is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him. For a people shall dwell in Zion, in Jerusalem; you shall weep no more. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. As soon as he hears it, he answers you. And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, 'This is the way, walk in it,' when you turn to the right or to the left." I was struck by the part about Lord waiting to be gracious to me and blessed are those who wait on the Lord. Waiting is a tough tutor, nevertheless, I am thankful for the lessons it is teaching me. I am even more thankful that this part of the wait is over. I hope I will remember these lessons as I continue to wait on Him both now and in the future.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within bless His holy name!

New Pics of Hannah

Just when I was getting pretty depressed with our wait, God sent us a ray of hope. Yesterday we received a nutrition update from Love Without Boundaries that included some new pictures of Hannah. I was glad to see that she is looking well and wearing my favorite color - turquoise. It is hard to know that she is getting bigger and bigger while we wait. However, I am reminded that we are waiting on God. His ways are higher than ours, and his timing is perfect. It is easier to say that than to walk daily in that faith. My weakness is revealed more and more through this process as I somehow fool myself by thinking that I can take better care of Hannah than God. Do I really believe that He is in control? Do I really trust him to care for her? Do I really understand this good work was prepared for me to walk in before I was born? No amount of striving on my part can change what God has planned for Hannah or me. It's not really about me after all, is it? It's about His will being performed. He will accomplish it in His time. He will strengthen my faith and grant me peace.

His mercies are new every morning. He is faithful. He shows me this once again. There is a little boy with Hannah in several of her pictures (not the little one above). He's a bit younger than she is and very cute. My heart has been drawn to him. Many times I have prayed for him and asked God if we should try to adopt him, too. Of course, we are not allowed to adopt more than one child at a time, but we would have to start the process all over after we returned home. I didn't know if this was in God's plan for us or not, but I kept praying that God would send him a family. He did. This week I received an email from a family in the Netherlands who will be adopting him. We are both part of a yahoo group for families who are adopting from the Gaoming orphanage. They were looking for any pictures or information, much like we did as soon as we knew about Hannah. I sent them all that I had and we will keep in touch. Isn't it wonderful when God answers our prayers so clearly? He had a plan for little Ming Hao to live with this family in the Netherlands. I am overjoyed. Thanks be to God for His gracious providence!

100 Good Wishes Quilt

I haven't posted in a while since I was really hoping I could post that we received our LOA. Well, we haven't yet. There is a slowdown because of fears surrounding the H1N1 flu (swine flu). It is discouraging because we thought we were so close. We had even seen others with our LID (Log In Date) receive their LOAs. I guess God has a different timetable in mind for us. Nevertheless, He is good. He shows us His faithfulness and kindness in many ways. One way is through the people He places in our lives. We are immensely blessed with friends and family who love and support us.

Recently, we received an unexpected gift - a 100 Good Wishes Quilt and Scrapbook. My dear friends, Carrie and Melissa, organized this secret effort to gather fabric and good wishes from our friends and family for a quilt and scrapbook for Hannah. The result is a beautiful testimony to their love for us and Hannah. The picture doesn't do it justice. It is a gorgeous tapestry of love. 39 families contributed to the gift. I was overwhelmed. The sentiments in the scrapbook bring tears to my eyes whenever I read them. Many people sent fabric that was dear to them: a favorite shirt, their children's receiving blankets, fabric from their own children's nurseries, clothing made into a quilt square, embroidered scriptures, etc. Carrie made the quilt and Melissa made the scrapbook. Both are precious and will be treasured. The quilt is already on Hannah's bed waiting for her. Come home soon, little one.

Reflections on Adoption

I was praying for Hannah the other day (as I do every day) as I reflected on our adoption in Christ. Going through this adoption process deepens my understanding of God's love for me as my love for Hannah grows. The surface comparison is obvious - God sought me out when I was a stranger; He bought me with a price - a great, very expensive price - the life blood of his own Son; He brought me into his family; He made me a son and an heir, giving me the full rights of his child.
As I journey farther in this adoption, studying things like attachment and bonding and what to expect from this little one who has never had a mother or father, the less obvious similarities are so striking to me that they make me love my heavenly Father all the more - He loved me with a deep longing and affection when I didn't even know His name; He loves me even when I don't understand how to love him back; He consistently clothes, nurtures, cares for me even when I don't recognize the fullness of his provision; He doesn't abandon me when I fight or rage against him, or when I grieve over the past, or when I choose old rags instead of his riches; He just holds me close, lets me wail, and teaches me to rest peacefully once I'm all cried out; As I grow to understand His love more and more, I learn to recognize His voice and follow after Him - when I do, He shows me great and unsearchable things that I didn't know before; He is faithful and I long to be faithful to Him.
How I pray that Hannah will recognize our love for her and in time, long to love us back. I pray that this adoption will help her understand how deep the Father's love is for us, how vast beyond all measure, that He would give his only Son to make a wretch His treasure. May she know it so deeply, because she has experienced a glimpse of it in our family. May all our children experience a deeper love of Christ because of this journey. I am.

LID - 2/13/09

We finally received the notification that our dossier was logged in to the CCAA on 2/13/09. Now we can officially start the next wait of 3-5 months. I pray that the wait will be on the short end, but I am preparing for it to be on the long end.

I can't help but get a few things ready now, though. I bought a couple of little outfits (even though we have tons of hand-me-downs from big sis and cousin, Meghan). From her latest measurements, I can tell that she and Gabe are just about the same size. I am using him as my little model to see if things will fit Hannah. He laughs when I put him in a girly-girl dress. I also bought some nesting cups that I saw were a good little toy to bring with us to China, a couple of new sippy cups in girl colors, and a few bottles. I think I am going to use some attachment and bonding advice from my toddler adoption books and give her a bottle each night (even if she has outgrown it). It helps to form that loving attachment between us. This is my biggest prayer - that she will learn to accept love from us and ultimately, learn to love us back. More later.

New Picture of Hannah

We just got a new picture of Hannah from the Love Without Boundaries Gaoming update. This group provides nutrition to several orphanages in China, including our Hannah's. Here's a pic of her and a little friend. The photo's caption in the update said, "The little guy on the left , DOB 4/14/07 now weighs 22lbs and is 31.5 in tall. His playmate on the right, DOB 7/14/06 now weighs 30.9lbs she’s 35 in tall."

It's great to get some new growth data. Eric checked her stats out on his growth curves and she is about 70% ile for weight and 28%ile for height. Obviously, she is being well fed and might be a little chubby. No worries. Once we get her running around with her brothers and sisters, she'll slim right down:-) Many thanks to Love Without Boundaries for feeding our little one so well.

Care Package and Chinese New Year

We sent our first care package to Hannah's orphanage last week. Our new friend, Nan, translated our letter into Chinese for us. Thanks, Nan! Some of you will recognize "Baby," Lauren's favorite lovey. Lauren's Baby is like the Velveteen Rabbit, loved so much that it became real. Here's a new Baby that maybe Hannah will learn to love. We also sent her some ladybug PJs and a ladybug toy. The other items (lotions, baby blankets, candy, and Desitin) are for the orphanage and the nannies. We sent along a disposable camera so we hope to get some pictures of Hannah with her friends and nannies at the orphanage. We hope to send another care package to her before we travel. Pray that she can understand that we love her and can't wait to be with her.

Here we are celebrating the Chinese New Year with paper lanterns and dragons made by the kids and Tif's best attempt at a Chinese meal. I'll definitely need to learn to make a few more authentic Chinese foods so Hannah will feel at home. Maybe Nan will help me with that, too.



We're still waiting on our LID (Log In Date), but we hope that it has already happened and we'll find it out soon. There is a new step in the process before travel (brought about by the Hague), so our travel timeframe keeps getting farther out. I don't know what to tell you. I'm telling myself September so I won't be disappointed if it really is that long. We hope it's sooner, of course. Patience!

DTC 1/30/09

That means Dossier to China on 1/30/09. Our dossier is finally complete and will be sent to China this Friday. I'm glad to get over that hurdle and move on to the next. Hold on, Hannah, we're coming!

Piecing Together the Past

We got a thought provoking email from someone on our Gaoming adoption group this week. She included a picture of a little girl who she thought might be our Hannah. She had visited the orphanage on a trip with Love Without Boundaries in 2007 as well as adopted a daughter from there. The picture that she sent us was one that I had seen when we first started looking for pictures of Hannah. It really looked a lot like her but it was a year old and it's hard to know with little ones. I eliminated the picture as our Hannah because the newsletter that contained it noted that this little girl was going to be adopted in China soon. Since that was in 2007, I thought surely this wasn't our girl.

Then, we got this picture again. We started really comparing every picture we had of our Hannah with this picture. More and more we started to think that this was, indeed, our Hannah. Little things like the way her left ear is more squared than rounded, her eyebrows are fuller at the outer edges, the shape of her eyes and nose. WOW! We can't be sure, but we really think this might be her.

Why do I make such a big deal about this picture? It shows me that God has been planning her to be in our family from the start. Another adoption might have fallen through in her past so that she could be waiting on us to find her. God sovereignly ordained her to be ready when we were. I am profoundly moved by this thought. She has been waiting an extra year or two for her family, because we were supposed to be her family. How great is our God! As we endure the next wait in our process, this will remind me again and again that God's timetable is the only one that matters.

The I-797c is here!

It came! It came! That paper from USCIS (Immigration) that we've been waiting on since September came yesterday. God is good and allowed it to come on a Wednesday (Eric's day off), so Eric could run it all over creation to get it notarized, county certified, state certified and UPS'd to the Chinese Consulate in Houston to be authenticated. After that it will go to our agency, Holt International, in Oregon and join up with the rest of our dossier. Finally, our dossier will head over to China. We'll get a Log in Date (LID). China will process it in 3-5 months. After that, we'll get an LOA (Letter of Acceptance) and TA (Travel Approval). All these acronyms!!! We're a little later than we had hoped to be, so we might not get to China until late summer. We trust that God has the timing all worked out and He is taking care of Hannah.

What God is Teaching Me
This whole process of adoption is definitely a faith-building experience. God knew that I needed more patience and more trust in Him, so He called me to adopt. I'm sure this waiting is just the beginning of learning to trust Him more and more. I am humbled by how easily I fall back into trusting in myself and my abilities. For example, we had a little scare last week. We got a call from our agency that China needed our dossier in China by February 7. On that same day we got a letter from USCIS that they couldn't process our paperwork because they were missing some approval letter. All at once we were struck with the fear that we might lose Hannah. If we couldn't get this paperwork snafu worked out, would China give her to someone else? Oh, the feelings of fear and despair that so quickly entered my heart! I bowed on my knees asking God to work this all out, but I desperately wanted to work it out myself. Couldn't I prod and push someone along so that we could be assured to meet the deadline? Why couldn't the system work more quickly so we wouldn't be put in this pressured place in the first place? Then, I realized it again. I was not trusting God to do this for us; I was trusting in myself. Only anxiety and fear came from that self-driven effort. I prayed some more. You know what? God brought me this overwhelming sense of peace. Somehow, I knew it would all be OK. God called us to this and He was going to provide the way. He reminded me of Proverbs 21:1 - The king's heart is like channels of water in the hand of the LORD; He turns it wherever He wishes. God will move the paperwork, the process, and all those people reviewing our documents as He wishes. The international bureaucracy doesn't control God; He controls it. He will accomplish His purposes. Thank the Lord for His continual grace and mercy to me, a slow learner in the trusting department! Lord, help me remember this as we wait through this next phase.