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.

Christmas Card

Make a Smilebox greeting

Waiting and Counting

We are still waiting on the 797c (the US Immigration paperwork that allows us to complete our dossier). We have been waiting since the end of September. For someone who is keen on efficiency like me, waiting on this seemingly endless bureacracy is a struggle. I fight feelings of depression, anger, and despair as I know that Hannah is spending her days without a family and we are so eager to bring her into ours. As a Christian I am so thankful that I have faith that God is in control of all things. I know that He planned Hannah for us from before her birth. I know that He has cared for her daily and still cares for her. I know that His plans cannot be thwarted. I know that His timing is perfect. Yet, I still battle the impatient thoughts that try to bring me down. There's an old hymn that comes to mind and brings me out of the "doldrums" as Eric calls them.

When upon life’s billows you are tempest-tossed,
When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost,
Count your many blessings, name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.

Are you ever burdened with a load of care?
Does the cross seem heavy you are called to bear?
Count your many blessings, every doubt will fly,
And you will keep singing as the days go by.

When you look at others with their lands and gold,
Think that Christ has promised you His wealth untold;
Count your many blessings—wealth can never buy
Your reward in heaven, nor your home on high.

So, amid the conflict whether great or small,
Do not be disheartened, God is over all;
Count your many blessings, angels will attend,
Help and comfort give you to your journey’s end.

I guess this says it all. Adopting Hannah is a blessing. God is taking care of her, and He is teaching me to trust Him more. Well, I feel better already. I guess this is part of building that "patient endurance with joy."

May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Col. 3:13-14

Unexpected Blessings

It is amazing how God supplies our needs - even when they are needs for pictures of our daughter across the world from us. I joined a couple of Yahoo groups for folks adopting from China and I have received many more pictures of our little Hannah than I ever dreamed. We have pictures from her babyhood all the way to the present. We were even sent a little video of her from this summer.

A wonderful family who had adopted from the Gaoming orphanage a few years ago returns from time to time as a mission. The father was drawn to our Hannah on his last trip and asked several questions about her and took a few minutes of video of her. Their family is thinking about adopting a girl around her age in another year and so she just captured his attention. They told me that they had been praying that she would find her family soon since they wouldn't be ready to adopt soon enough for her. Isn't that awesome? A family we never knew was praying for our daughter that we didn't know yet to be united with us! His ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts higher than our thoughts.

I'm going to post as many of the photos and video as I can fit on the site.

God directs our path

Welcome to our blog. I wanted to create a way for all our friends and family to follow the exciting journey towards bringing Hannah Shan home. I'll try to post new photos and videos as I get them.

To bring everyone up to date, God laid on our hearts the desire to adopt a little girl with special needs from China last summer. It seemed that every Bible verse about being adopted as sons, taking care of the widows and orphans, being bought with a price, being sought out by God... just kept coming before us. Combined with our unexpected desire for more children, we knew God had a plan for us. We also had a great peace from God about adopting from China. We first considered Ethiopia but never really had a peace about it. Then, we attended a conference call about minor special needs children from China and we both knew that's where God wanted us. We were uniquely suited to take care of a special needs child and the lost daughters of China just captured our hearts.

We started our homestudy and application process in July. I pushed through the paperwork as fast as possible, but soon found out that efficiency on my part didn't equate to a fast process. Adoption is a seemingly endless wait. It is clear that God was using this to teach me to wait on Him and be content. Once I finally rested in His timing and plan, He surprised us with an early referral of a little girl. We weren't expecting any referral until our dossier was logged in, but this referral came even before that.

Most of you know this part of the story: We received the phone call and emailed file of little Ming Shan - DOB 7/14/06. She has thalassemia minor but is in good health. We had to make the decision within 24 hours. Eric sought the counsel of a hematologist and his partners for medical advice. It seems she may not even have thalassemia but just the trait. That would mean no symptoms. We won't be sure until she gets to the US for some more blood tests. Either way, the prognosis looks good. We prayed about it and were quickly sure that this was our daughter. How could you not fall in love with that sweet little face?

We were all elated. We immediately put her referral picture in a frame on the mantel and decided to name her Hannah Shan. This little girl that we prayed for without a name or a face is now known and loved by our family.

WHERE ARE WE IN THE PROCESS? We have just sent off our documents to the Chinese Consulate in Houston for authentication. Hopefully, we'll get them back in a week or two and then send them along to our agency for review and translation into Chinese. We're still waiting on an immigration form called the 797c. Whenever that finally gets to us, we'll get it authenticated, sent in, and then our dossier should be complete. It would be great to get a log-in date around the first of the year.

WHEN DO WE GET TO GO GET HANNAH? We have been told that time to travel after your dossier is logged in is about 3-5 months. I'm telling myself May/June. It would be great if it were earlier, but I'm not counting on it.

I'll keep you updated. Pray for Hannah. Pray for us. Thank God for his merciful care!