Faith

I just read a great book which I highly recommend "Same Kind of Different as Me". It is a wonderful story which truly illustrates the power of God. During the last couple of weeks we have been truly disheartened with the process of international adoption. An increase in wait times, no news or limited information, and just downright impatience has caused us great difficulty. I started reading the book to try to take my mind off of everything. Little did I know, God would have life lessons for me to learn. There is a line in the book which says "Our limitations are God's opportunties". When first reading it you may go hmmm...interesting. After you trully consider the ramifications of this statement, you are more likely to say "Wow".
Most of us have difficulty turning to God during the mundane times of our lives. The ho-hum, everyday stuff usually becomes routine; requiring little thought, much less faith. But, when we are smacked in the face or knocked to our knees, we are able to see how weak we are and how fragile LIFE as we know it can be. Through all of this, we have tried to stay strong and have faith, but when control is truly taken away from us, as it has been once we sent our dossier to China, we felt helpless and out of control. George Michael's line of "gotta have faith" is correct, but so much more difficult when you have no control. Ironic or awkward as it may seem, you cannot be in control and have faith in God.
So, we wait. Prayers have been answered in that we have verified our checks have cleared and our dossier is still being processed so thank you to all of those who were Prayer Warriors for us. We appreciate our family and friends who are willing to take up the torch for us when we are so unsure and just plain tired. We will see our son...soon, which of course is relative and totally in God's hands.

New Pictures!

Although this is our first adoption, I can't imagine having a better adoption case worker than Ming! Those of you who know me, know that I am not a patient person but Ming is very patient and understanding. She also goes out of her way in my opinion to provide us with updates - hence the title! We have new pictures of our son, just received today! In one he is holding the Gecko we sent over in a care package - you can see the typical boy pose - Great...a stuffed animal :) We love him so much!! Thanks for following our journey!

Abbreviations, who knew?

As an educator, I am fairly well versed in the variety of abbreviations and acronyms in the world - we are surrounded by them. I have to admit, however, that the world of adoption is inundated with them. In an attempt to make this blog easier, I am going to list the ones we have figured out in case we use them. First we were PA - preliminary approval, then we were DTC - dossier to China for which we had to provide a LOI - letter of intent. Now we are waiting on our LOA - letter of acceptance so that we can get our TA - travel approval which all starts from our LID - log in date. Make sense? :)
And that's just the ones we have figured out.

The worst day ever...and how quickly things can change

First - the home study. It was actually a fairly easy process. We met with Elizabeth three times, once here and twice in Atlanta. It was very laid back and I had cleaned feverishly for nothing - really, you don't understand, I cleaned the top of the cabinets - you can't even SEE the top of the cabinets. It rained horribly the day she came to the house and she got lost. We were really concerned that the Atlanta city girl would have issues with the farm, animals, and essentially living in the middle of nowhere, but she LOVED it! Thought it was great for raising kids and felt Samuel was a great kid - of course :) So, the interviews/visits were not bad. What was bad was the PAPERWORK!! Copies of this, that, and the other and clearences to make sure we are not mass murderers or child molesters. Speaking of...the reason I entitled this entry the worst day ever is for that last portion - child molester. Not that we are, but you have to get clearance checks to prove it. Walker county was not very helpful so when we received a call from Ming on April 30th we thought our world was crashing.

Simon was an agency referral based on a camp AAI hosted in October of 2008. Only AAI could handle his adoption. The bad thing is that this is time sensitive and on April 30th Ming called to advise us that China had begun to pull back the referrals and we had to get everything in by Friday or we would loose him. WHAT!!?? Our homestudy wasn't complete because Elizabeth had not received our clearance from Walker Co. yet - they had had it for 6 wks. We began racing to make phone calls and beg and plead for it to be completed. Elizabeth was wonderful trying to help us get everything together. We had to have pictures made - mine are LOVELY because I had been crying to much. We also had to write a letter of intent (LOI) to adopt Simon explaining to the Chinese government why we wanted to adopt and how we would preserve his heritage. Done...still nothing from Walker County, so, on Friday, after having a nervous breakdown, my Asst Principal comes in with one of our teachers who used to work for DFCS. She makes a few calls and provides me with a number of a supervisor for the whole area. Called - they were out until Monday, so I have another nervous breakdown with his secretary. God LOVE this woman. She made it her personal crusade to get this taken care of and within 2 hours, Elizabeth had the letter and we were good to go. God is good!!

So, after we averted that catastrophy, our paperwork was sent to China. Now we were just waiting for a prelimary approval so that we could proceed with the adoption. On May 14th we received the best email ever. Not only were we approved, we received updated pictures and measurements of our son. We were so pleased and proud to see how much he has grown in just a few short months. Now, if we could just bring him home!!

Funny...

It's funny how life unfolds some times. Really. Who would have thought we would be embarking on this journey at this time in our lives? We have been married for 13 years and have one beautifully, talented, and intelligent son. We have struggled and overcome so many obstacles in our life together and have been able to maintain our family at times through sheer strength of will (His will, not ours). And so, it stands to reason that when we prayed and God directed us to adopt a child, that we would end up in the process of adopting the total opposite of where we started. I often say God keeps me around for comic relief. He is always watching to see what plan, long or short term, that I am going to come up with and then makes sure to let me know that the plan is His and may have nothing to do with my grand design.
On February 16th, we met with a local agency to discuss the possibility of adopting. We had decided to adopt a child up to the age of three, preferably a boy, non-special needs. After meeting with the adoption agency, we decided to consider special needs but maintain our age limit. On February 17th, while doing a web search to try to find pictures of different special needs...I found my son. It's the same feeling as holding your newborn in your arms for the first time, but your heart aches because you know you have just begun a journey with no time-frame or defined time-line. When reading his information, I found that he was a waiting child due to his age only and he was six years old...none of that mattered. That was my son! After showing the picture to Scott and Samuel - our fate was sealed. We all agreed this was the missing member of our family.
On February 19th, I placed the call to the agency with our son's picture. I was cautioned by the operator that several people had called and he was most likely already in the process of being adopted. She then transferred me to Laura, who admitted several calls had been placed, but Simon was still available. My heart stopped! Were we interested? Are you kidding!?! Laura gave us Lisa's number who handled the China Waiting Child program. I called Lisa and received first-hand information about our son as Lisa had met him and spent two weeks at the orphanage conducting a camp. She was thrilled so speak to us about Simon as she advised just the day before she had been praying for a family for this child as his wait with the agency had been longer than expected. She advised our first step would be to place him "on hold" so that no one else could begin paperwork on him. She emailed me medical documentation and additional pictures which we forwarded on to our pediatrician. It took a while to have the documents reviewed, but by the end of February we had given an affirmative YES and had our interview with the agency. Now...on to the homestudy.