Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone! "For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord."

We are enjoying our family time and the blizzard from indoors this Christmas. It sure is pretty out there...from in here where it's warm. We keep talking about going skating in the snow...but it's all talk right now. Hard to give up the warmth and the bottomless cup of hot coffee Ruth & Loren provide at their Marshall bed and breakfast.

We haven't updated for awhile and I thought I would catch up on what's new with our journey to Joshua. We had a major answer to prayer a few days ago. There was a document we needed from the US Dept of Immigration before our agency could make our appointments in China or book our travel. From everything we've heard from our social worker and other MN families, it wasn't supposed to show up until late Feb/early March. We would still be going to get Joshua, but so much later than we wanted to. Well, let's face it, we want to go NOW! Every day I look at his sweet face, I'm dying to bring him home immediately. I know he's very loved and cared for in his orphanage, but a mom always wants her kids with her. OK, not when she needs to go grocery shopping, that's when this mom doesn't want her kids with her...but you catch my drift. I digress, the point is, we got that document 2 weeks ago!!! An honest to goodness answer to the prayers of many. A minor miracle. Jackson's passport came two days after that, so visa's have been applied for and the journey is right on track!

Now we're just waiting for our TA (Travel Approval) from China and then everything gets booked and we really start the packing. Hard to imagine that after 4 long years.

We're going to learn as much Mandarin as we can before we leave. I want to attempt to communicate with my littlest son as much as I can. I have to say, while I know it will work out and I know Joshua will learn English over time, I am so afraid he will be scared to come home with us. We're putting that little guy through a LOT of change in a short period of time and it's only fair that his mommy can say some of his words to comfort him. I'm so lucky to have a couple of friends in Woodbury that speak Mandarin (and should probably be buying them big gifts now for all the favors I will be asking for in the future), but I just wish I spoke it right now. Hopefully I can get this old brain to wrap itself around a completely new language in a few weeks.

I can say, with all confidence, that God has planned this adventure from day one and I am so excited to see what He has planned. We feel so incredibly blessed with our whole family this Christmas and we're trying to soak in all the good that God has brought our way, we hope you can too. Thanks for reading this and sharing in our journey!

Love you all and MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Michelle

Filling in the details....

So the last blog post may have been a bit of a disconnect for many of you reading this....."Weren't you in the process of adopting a little girl from China?" "Weren't you talking about being two years away from completing the adoption process?" About one month ago, the answer to these two questions was "yes". Well, alot has changed in a month!

Four Long Years
As many of you know, when we started the adoption process with China 4 years ago (Dec 2005). One of the reasons we chose China was that the adoption timeline was relatively quick and very dependable— history had shown that children were regularly placed 6-8 months after China had approved the paperwork. Well, our timing wasn't good....coinciding with the time of our application, Chinese adoptions slowed to a painful pace. Our expected wait grew longer each month— as of October we were expecting to be able to travel to China in about two years.

Waiting Child Program
Late this summer, when we met with our adoption agency social worker to update paperwork (for the ump-teenth time), she let us know that our agency (America World) had observed an increase in adoptions of kids from China that had some type of medical condition (either exsiting or corrected) and that these kids were getting placed very quickly. China had a special adoption process for these kids called the "waiting child program". We were cautious about applying for this program, not necessarily feeling equipped to care for a child with developmental or physical issues, but after investigating further we came to realize that the reasons kids were put on the program varied widely. We decided to apply to the Waiting Child program and pursue this path concurrently with our existing application. Before we had even submitted our paperwork, our social worker called to say that our agency had received a dedicated referral that she thought we'd be very interested in.

Guangwei
We fell in love with the pictures of the little boy immediately and knew that we wanted to move forward with bringing him into our family. Guangwei (his Chinese name that we'll retain as his middle name) was born on July 1, 2006 (he's 3 1/2). He was on the Waiting Child program due to a condition with his achilles tendon that he has already had surgery to correct. He currently is in an orphanage in the city of Shenzhen City, located in the far southern part of mainland china and separated only by a river from Hong Kong.

More to come...
We'll try to keep the blog updated with our travel plans— we already are getting a steady stream of travel communications from our agency (and more paperwork!). We're already starting to realize that the roughly 1.5 months until we travel will likely be a whirlwind. Our agency has tentatively told us that they're targeting the end of January for our trip. We'll meet up with other adoptive families from our agency in Beijing, do some site seeing there for a few days, then travel to Shenzhen to meet and pick up Joshua, and finally leave from Guangzhou (which is where the US Consulate is). All told it will be a 2 week trip. Oh, and yes, we are taking Jackson with us! We're sure at some point in the 14 hour flight we'll question that decision (or maybe the rest of the airplane passengers will??), but we're in this as a family and we can't imagine not taking him along for this adventure!

-Brad

The RA is coming

We got our RA already! Just days after getting our PA (Preliminary Approval) our RA (Referral Approval) came! It's just unreal! Joshua is OURS!!! Can you tell I'm thrilled? Could I use more punctuation???

Wow, God is so good, truly He is. We always know He is, but this is one of those times in life when His goodness, His mercy is so obvious. After waiting, hoping, giving up and hoping again and again, He's providing in miraculous ways. It's still hard to realize that Joshua is coming home, we'll meet our son soon, how do you wrap your mind around that one? I don't have all the answers, but God does and we're following His plan, so it should be a great adventure!

Michelle

Getting Started

Hello— We've created this site to share updates and news regarding our adoption journey to bring home our son Joshua from Shenzhen City, China. As blogging newbies, we make no promises regarding the regularity of our posts, but we start with good intentions :)