Next Week!

It is official--we leave the 5th of October! Please pray we can find some (decently priced) airline tickets. More to come . . . :)

For those of you (faithful blog-readers or not) who have wondered where we've been in the blog world, I thought I better take a quick moment to catch you up. :) At our last post we were still WAITING--that particular wait ended for us July 27th when we receive our LOA (Letter of Approval) from China to adopt SongLian. Yeah! This is real! The last 2 months have been full of steps 8-15 (if you remember #17 is travel): 8. 800 paper work submitted to USCIC - 8/1 9. 800 provisional approval received - 8/15 10. Information sent to Nation Visa Center - 8/20 11. visa information cabled to US Embassy in Guangzhou - 8/27 12. Article 5 letter received - 9/11 13. Article 5 to the CCCWA - 9/12 14. Travel Approval received from CCCWA - 9/21 15. Apply for Consulate Appointment - 9/22 Up next: 16. Receive Consulate Appointment (we should hear by Tuesday morning)* 17. Travel (about 2 weeks after receiving TA) *This appointment will give us our travel dates. So full of thankfulness that within a few weeks we will have our sweet girl. Our room has turned into an international packing zone as we gather the (many) items to travel to China and back with 4 children. :)We will be in country for 2 weeks in order to process all that needs to be processed (and will keep you posted while we are there). THANK YOU for your prayers for our family-- *We need them now: life is full, full, full and our emotions are all over the place. Thanks for praying for our family unit as well as the check-list of things to be done before we go. And we know we will need your prayers as we travel and upon return. God is good: it is He who called us to this journey and it is He who will be faithful to complete it. So glad we can trust in His sovereignty.

For those of you wondering where we've been (in the adoption world) I can sum it up in one word: waiting. Yep,we received our LID (log in date with China) March 26th with great speed and began the 30-90 day wait for our LOA (letter of approval which is needed to move forward). So, being the freakishly do-ahead-of-time person I am I quickly got ALL the paperwork ready for the steps following LOA (umm, I think I was ready March 27th). Thirty days passed . . . sixty days . . . (PATIENCE!!!) . . . ninety days (BLAH!!). . . you do the math; we are still waiting. What we've learned is that our dossier (that giant stack of paperwork we sent) is sent out to be translated. And the time it takes each translator to translate varies greatly (think we got a slow translator?). Mid June our dossier was finished being translated and in process and LOA was expected "soon." I can just say that God is teaching me much about patience, His Sovereignty, and being grateful for the blessings each and every moment (that said some days are HARD). Thanks for praying that "soon" is soon. :) I will admit that these days the vision of my sweet SongLian grows faint--all the little projects I need to finish before we get her are more bitter than sweet these days. Well . . . a few days ago I sat here and prayed for some connect to my China-Daughter. I just needed SOMETHING! So I punched in some random things on good 'ol Google and found an amazing gold-mine: redthreadcharities.org. This is an organization out of Minnesota that works with 3 orphanages in China--yep, one is SongLian's. And guess what? They work with children with physical challenges just like SongLian. Long story short I contacted them and they responded . . . and know her. Here is an exert from the e-mail "What I can tell you about your daughter is that she is beautiful and charming, a little introspective but not particularly shy. She is well socialized. She is very observant. I watched her being very patient waiting for her 'turn'. I know that she will be a wonderful addition to your family." and we got pictures of her from last October (she is tiny and precious!) and this April. What a gift (and a reminder that God cares for even the least of these). Red Thread Charities has had an amazing impact on our daughter's life--we are so grateful. Thanks for following and keeping this journey in your prayers. We are SO thankful for your support. :) And . . . just a reminder that we are still collecting fabric for SongLian's quilt. What a neat reminder of the people who loved, supported and prayed for her even before knowing her (yes, that is YOU!). All we need is: *Fabric (your choice)-- 2 10 inch squares and a scrap with your note OR 1/3 of a yard *A note, prayer, blessing or Bible Verse (we will make a book out of these) Blessings, The Hardee-Mom :)