Pre-Approval!!!!!

Today we received our Pre-Approval from China! This came only one week since God connected us with Ava. Now we are waiting for our SCL (Seeking Confirmation Letter) or also known as your Referral. We are guessing that we should travel by June. However, there is a possibility that we could travel in May.

We have asked our agency if we can now share Ava's picture on our blog. As soon as we get permission, we will post her picture.

Continue to pray for us and Ava.

Amazing Day!

Today was an amazing day of worship for us. God seems to be moving in a mighty way in our recent worship services. But today was an extra special day. We were able to share Ava's picture with her other family...her church family. Our church family has held our hands every step of the way. It was three years ago this past December that we shared our adoption plans and asked for prayers. Prayer has been the only thing that has gotten us through these past three years. As I (Chris)shared our praise, I naturally started crying. Anyone that knows me well enough knows that I am an emotional person. Poor Jackson has been "blessed" with this trait. The man sitting in front of us who has just recently started attending our church told us it was an amazing testimony. We pray that Ava's story will touch others lives.

We received another blessing yesterday. We were able to sell the week we had booked at Disney in June. This money will go toward the trip. We were also gifted today at church with a check from some dear friends.

Our plan for the week is to finish up what little paperwork we have left. AND to count down the days until we get to see Ava face to face.

We have so MANY stories that we want to share but are limiting what information we give out until we are approved by China.

LOI, LOI, LOI!!!!!

It's still all a little surreal but we finally have a daughter!!!! We can't stop smiliing and praising God!! It was a little different than I had ever imagined, though.
We learned last Friday that some new angels had been added to our agency's waiting child list. For some reason, I didn't check the website immediatly, but when I did, I was immediatly drawn to this precious baby girl. (We had the opportunity to view a file of another CHI angel baby about a year ago, little Claire, who had a very similar diagnosis.) I talked with Chris and submitted a request to view her file. To be honest, I never thought we stood a chance. I was sure there would be tons of others who submitted their request first. We never heard anything all week-end but on Sunday morning, Chris and I went forward and prayed together at church that this little beauty would find her forever family. Monday morning Chris and I headed to St.Louis to take my father-in-law to a Dr.'s appointment. On the ride up I checked my e-mail on my phone and learned that she had a family reviewing her!! We were excited but not suprised and after so many dissappointments, I had protected my heart from attaching to her. Later,(about 5 miles from CHI's office) I was trying to entertain Hud while everyone else was in with the doc, and I saw another e-mail from Tina from CHI with baby girl's info. HUHHHHH????? They were allowing several families to view her file at the same time. But the file was too large to open on my phone. Panic set in, then I remembered WE BROUGHT THE LAPTOP!! Quick as a flash, I called my sis and told her to get a hold of my bro-in-law who's a doctor and I forwarded all her info to him. My sis said he may not get the message til later that evening,UGH. Meanwhile, my in-laws know nothing about what's going on so Chris and I spend our lunch giivng each other these knowing looks,LOL. On our way home, we stop at Coldstone Creamery(yum) and I get a frantic call from my sis, saying bro-in-law says we should "go for it." Next, a frantic call to CHI and we wait to see if she's been locked. Chris' phone rings while we were paying, she's ours!!! Okay, now I've had visions of this moment for years....tears of joy, birds singing, clinging to my overjoyed husband. Instead I'm standing next to my mother-in-law who's blissfully unaware of the situation, munching away at her ice-cream and I'm trying to contain my tears and screams. I was literally shaking!!! We finally get in the van and make our announcement!! This is one for the baby book! We raced home, completed our Letter of Intent (LOI) and sent it to our agency. We got word from our agency that it has been submitted today to the CCAA, so now we just wait for our pre-approval (PA), which usually takes around 2 weeks.
We are thrilled beyond words but are still feeling so very sorry for the families who were also reviewing her file and thought they had also found their daughter. We've been there and remember the pain, vividly.
We are hoping to travel this summer to bring home our little Ava!!! Will post more soon!!!

Spring Cleaning of Sorts

Okay, Okay...Time to roll up our sleeves and clear off the dust and cobwebs off our long neglected blog. We've procrastinated long enough. It seemed for so long, all we were getting from our agency was more bad news and personally I was tired of reporting only negative stuff. Finally, in December, a glimmer of hope arrived when we learned that our agency had finally received approval from the COA for their Hague accreditation. Then we had a LONG 2 month wait for China to re-approve our agency for the waiting child program. They began receiving access to the special needs kiddos about 2 weeks ago, Praise the LORD!!
Anyway, we were near the top of the list for a special needs referral when our agency lost access last July, so we are back at the top. However, many more agencies also now have access so this list so there is much more competition among agencies to lock the children's files (ugh, hate the fact we are competing for a child). The lists are released usually monthly so now we just wait month by month until we receive "the call." It is our prayer that we will see our daughter's face by Christmas.
On the home front, the boys are all growing like weeds. Morgan and Jackson have both decided to not play baseball this summer and Hudson will start his first season. I love watching them play at this age. They are all so funny and by the end of every game, we are all in stitches.
We all attended our junior high science fair last night, and were stunned when Morgan was awarded "Best of Show" for his research project. Totally wasn't expecting that one. I, er I mean, "he" worked very hard on it all year and I am very proud of my, oops, his work. So anyone at church who saw me earnestly sculpting away at an attempt at a human stomach, it paid off! Seriously, Morgan has put a
lot of time and effort in this project for the past few months.
Hudson has been celebrating the Chinese New Year in his Pre-K class. They topped it off with a field trip to a local Chinese buffet last week. His attempts with the chopsticks actually were not too shabby.
We are all looking forward to warmer weather and some REALLY big news in the next few months. We are also continuing to pray with boldness and casting out the rumor sites which had become idols in my life. Not to mention the emotional turmoil it was causing me. Continuing to pray for peace, patience, and perseverance!

Here am I. Send me!

Downtown Disney

Our beloved Disney

winning the world series

playing at Busch Stadium

Jack at bat!!

Won't pose right for even just one pic!

Yes it has been a while since we have updated last. Since our last post in May, we closed on our new country home and sold our home in town to a good friend of ours. We all seem to be loving the country life. It seems that we have worked more in our yard in the country than we ever did in town. One thing we never experienced in town is having to cut up a fallen tree so that we could get out of our drive way. The boys have been very excited to see deer and wild turkeys in the field next to us. So we made a good decision to become "country folk."

We made our annual trek to Disney World in July. Again we had an amazing time. This trip we actually relaxed and spent a lot of time around the pool. Hudson grew enough so that he could ride some of the bigger rides. He LOVED Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain, Test Track, and Tower of Terror. We also celebrated Hudson's 4th birthday while we were there.

We survived another season of Little League. This may have been Morgan's last year to play. He doesn't know if he wants to move to the next level or not. Jackson's team went undefeated and won the World Series. His team was also chosen as one of the Redbird Rookie teams to play at Busch Stadium. They had a blast playing at Busch Stadium. Fred Bird was the pitcher. Jackson got a hit his first time up to bat.

This summer brought several roller coasters. Most were at Disney World but the biggest one was on our adoption journey. Before we left on vacation, we were told that we were very close to receiving our referral since we opened ourselves to a Waiting Child. While on vacation we were making our plans about traveling to China to meet our daughter. When we got back, we found out that our adoption agency was denied their Hague accreditation by the COA. This put an immediate halt to our journey. Our agency has requested to be reconsidered for accreditation and will have an answer within the next two weeks. So most of our prayers right now are focused on our agency.

So what does "Here am I. Send me!" mean. Well, we must be honest about our faith being shaken recently. A couple of weeks ago, God spoke through a song on the radio that said "Here am I. Send me!" He reminded us that we stated these words in some form in the beginning of our journey. This journey began with our desire to have a daughter but has moved to one in which we continue to tell God to send us because we are ready. Well tonight we heard these words again. Tonight was our church's monthly youth event called Pure Intensity. The speaker ended the sermon with asking the question from Isaiah..."Who will go forth?" Our answer is HERE WE ARE (READY AND WILLING), SEND US!!!!!!!!!!!

Keep us in your prayers as we continue our journey to our daughter.

News...News...News!

Well where should we begin since we haven't posted for almost 2 months. Since our last post, we have moved. We have become country folks. For the past two years, we have wanted to purchase a house near where Tammy grew up. Well, we moved in at the beginning of May. In addition to the move, we have been working on our house to prepare it for sale. The boys have been truly enjoying living in the country. One plus is as Jackson put it...the air is cleaner in the country. He has such a unique perspective.

On the adoption front, our agency is putting in place changes to their Waiting Children process. It is a positive change. We have to turn in more paperwork on May 27.

God has truly blessed us recently. I (Chris) have always wanted to be in control of the financial end of the adoption even though I knew God is the One truly in control. At the end of this past Sunday's service, I asked the prayer partners to pray with me. The prayer partners for the day happened to be two dear friends of ours. I asked them to pray for God to increase my faith about the adoption and to pray that He could decrease my pride so that I will accept help with the adoption. After the service, we were given a financial gift for the adoption. We never could have imagined that we would receive a gift this size. We were given $10,000.00 to put toward our adoption costs. WOW!!!!!!!!!!! When God blesses, He truly blesses. We now have half the money we need to complete the adoption.

We will try to keep this updated more often than we have.

The Other Family

Well, most everyone who knows us knows about our recent experience with the Gour Family. Just in case you haven't heard, a couple of months ago, we had the privilege to review the file of a precious little girl from a waiting list of special needs children our agency had received. She had been diagnosed with a form of Spina Bifida and we were sure she was meant to be ours. But, God had a different plan and after an agonizing few days of fervent praying and searching our souls, we called our agency and declined her referral. The Gours are the family she was always meant to be with and I have had the opportunity to connect with this family via e-mails. It has been an awesome experience and I guess our agency agreed because they saw our families' stories on the Gour's blog and decided to feature it in their monthly newsletter. I was contacted today by our agency, also, requesting permission to send our story to larger publications. When all of this first started, I wondered why God allowed us even to review Claire's file, because we had already begun to bond with her, and turning her down was absolutely heartbreaking. Why did He allow us to go through all that emotional turmoil? I now see that this has become so much bigger than I ever thought. If we can help one family that is going through a similar situation, it was worth every second of hurt. I do know also, that this whole thing has helped affirm the Gour's decision to adopt Claire, and knowing that has helped tremendously. Here's a link to our agency's newsletter.

http://www.childrenshopeint.org/E-News/Mar08/email.htm



We are "The Other Family"