God has impressed on us to begin another journey. The journey that leads us to the greatest blessings. This journey will challenge us, keep us on our knees, stretch us in ways we never were, cause Satan to attack us, keep our bank accounts dry, give us tears of frustration, make our hearts grow bigger than they were before, bring joy that exudes from our soul, have us praising God from the mountain tops, give us a precious gift greater than any gold, store up treasures in heaven. I am excited and so privileged to start this journey.
If you haven't guessed already what the journey is, it is one that will take us to China again and bring us a new child or two. Yes, I said two. We are hoping to bring home two precious Chinese children home to our family by this time next year.
There are over 145 million orphans in the world. God commands us as believers to care for the widows and orphans. We believe God has called Jay and I to take some into our family, to give them a mother and father that is devoted to them. We know WE are not the ones who will save them. That is God's doing. But we are willing vessels to give up all we have, to love these precious gifts of His.
After 2 weeks of praying and studying agencies, we have finally picked one that has a little girl we are interested in pursuing. She is only 3 months younger than Asher, which makes her birthday in June 2010. However, she is quite developmentally delayed, that from her pictures and short videos she looks like a 12 month old. She has a leg deformity that we still aren't quite sure all the details of. Her medical report is quite vague. We have already fallen in love with her. We plan to name her Elliana (Ellie) which means "God is Yahweh". We will put part of her Chinese name for her middle name as well.
As far as the second child, we aren't sure yet how that will work out. We just believe we are to follow God's leading. We desire to keep birth order in our family and that will mean the second child will likely be close to age 1 when we get matched with him or her.
For now, we are getting our paperwork in to begin the homestudy process again and for the placing agency we are using, which is Lifeline. Then we will ask China to give us a Preapproval for the little girl we love already. Once that is approved, I imagine we will begin looking at files for a second child.
Your prayers are appreciated. Our bank accounts are empty after paying the first fees and while we do think we can pay a good amount each month as we save and scrimp, prayers are always helpful in that area. Honestly, I must admit I am not looking forward to all the waiting.. the waiting on homestudy meetings, homestudy approval, immigration approval, China's approval, immigration approval AGAIN, travel approval and more..That was so trying on my patience last time. I hope I can have more faith and patience this time around.
We know God will bring home our babies and we are grateful He has brought us on this journey again. We truly are the ones that have been blessed with Asher's adoption. All of our children were so excited when we told them and had been asking us for months when we were going to bring home a sibling for Asher? When we told them we were going to bring home two siblings they were thrilled.
We also need prayers for all the major adjustments we will be dealing with. Jay and I will be traveling together and needing to leave Asher behind. It will have been almost two years since he came when we actually go, and he is bonding so well. It really has been easy with him. He fits into our family so well and truly is a happy boy. But, he is a Mommy AND Daddy boy. It will be hard for him not having either of us for two weeks and then when he has us again he will have two siblings to share us with. The good news is that he LOVES all of his older siblings and they truly love Him. He is going to have lots of distractions and a huge amount of attention.
I will keep you updated as I have more news. I am hoping my next bit of news will be pre-approval from China. We can't submit that until Jay and I have our doctor physicals. I have mine in a week and Jay is the week after mine, so it might be a good month until we have that PA from China. Again, I need my patience with this process. It all comes together, but it is slow.
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