Just happened to?

Some of my family was gathering to celebrate my 30th birthday (a little early) on Friday, Febrary 19th, when my phone lit up with an email from CCAI saying that were were DTC!  Dossier To China!  

I had commented in an adoption Facebook group that when we were DTC I would throw a party, but instead one was being thrown for me! Such timing is stunning.  What is more is that they could not have sent it a day sooner.  If they sent it earlier it possibly could have arrived before I was 30 and China would not have taken it.  So this was the soonest it could go out, and it also just happened to be perfect timing with how things naturally went.

Monday, February 22 I got an email that afternoon saying that our dossier had arrived at the Chinese Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption (CCCWA)!  I was so thankful because I felt like I had been praying it across the ocean to arrive safely.  I was surprised at how quickly it had arrived.  It arrived at the soonest it could have possibly arrived after my 30th.  It couldn't have come Friday when the office was open because I would be 29.  The soonest it could arrive was the 22nd, and it just happened to be perfect timing.

Wednesday, February 24th in the evening we got an email that we had our logged in date (LID).  Three days!  In an email we got from CCAI, our adoption agency, it said that it could take about 2 weeks.  

I don't feel that these dates "...just happened to..." be on exactly the right or soonest dates that they could be with me turning 30.  

I don't think it is a coincidence.  I believe that is is God's hand working.

Matthew and I pray every night for our little girl.  We also pray for the process, our dossier, the grants, and fundraising.  We know that we need His help in each and every step.

I believe that the dossier and the timing and speed of it was a direct answer to prayer.  The prayer of Matthew and I and all of you who are petitioning God on our behalf to bring our little girl home very, very, miraculously soon.

I also don't think it is a coincidence that our red envelope fundraiser that began with 150 envelopes is now down to 3 in just a little over a month since we began!  Three!  God moved in a powerful way through so many of you.  Whether it was $2 or $500 you are a direct link to helping bring our daughter home and we can't thank you enough.  Thank you for being a direct answer to our prayers for our fundraising.  

God is answering our prayers.

I have written in my journal that I believe God is moving quickly with the dossier, and the fundraising because He is going to bring our girl home very, very soon.  He alone knows who she is and when we will get her.  

I am boldly and persistently praying.  And it gives me joy and faith that you are praying boldly and persistently with us.  

Thank you.  

I wrote this blog on Established in Grace but wanted to share it here too.

Turning 30: Joy and Celebration

I was laying in bed thinking about this blog.  Thinking about turning thirty and how my heart thrills and races at the thought of my upcoming birthday.  And it struck me that Jesus started something huge when He was thirty too.  He began His public ministry.

We are adopting from China and the Chinese government won’t let you adopt until both adoptive parents are 30.  I turn 30 on Sabbath, February 20th.  Six months before you turn 30 you are allowed to begin working on your dossier because it takes about that long to get it ready and then when you are 30 all the documents get sent to China and you get logged into their system.  Last week we sent our dossier to our adoption agency!  Yesterday we just got the email that it passed the critical review and everything looks perfect for the Chinese government.  Now it has been sent to be translated and then it will be all bound together and sent to China!  Then we wait to be matched with our daughter.

I can’t wait until my birthday. I don’t remember ever feeling this way about a birthday.  Even now as I type this adrenaline pumps through my veins.  I. am. so. excited!  I will officially be allowed to claim our daughter and officially allowed to hold her in my arms and love her and call her my own, and bring her home.  I can officially work on bonding and attachment and nurturing her body and soul.

Is that how Jesus felt when He started His public ministry? It wasn’t that He did love us from heaven, or didn’t love people while He was on earth for all those years before He began His public ministry.  Did Jesus have adrenaline pumping through His veins as He walked toward John the Baptist?  So excited because He was about to began His official ministry.  He would officially be able to heal publicly, hold the sick and dying, bless the children as He held them.  He would officially be able to weep for Jerusalem as He longed to gather all under His protection of love.  He officially could teach the masses and nurture their bodies and souls.

I never thought about how Jesus could have been excited.  I view it as solemn thing, His beginning His ministry.  And it was!  It was more vast and huge than I can comprehend and the serious gravity that was on Jesus’ shoulders was solemn and holy.  Yet…His love for us propelled His actions.  And now, I feel that even in the heaviness of His mission that His joy and love for us was greater.

I know that bringing our daughter home won’t be easy.  I realize that there will be very hard times ahead.  Medically, emotionally, socially…and a host of other things.  But you know what?  As much as I am preparing and praying for those things–that doesn’t diminish the absolute joy and celebration I feel about turning 30 and officially being able to be her mama.

As much as Jesus prayed and fought the darkness of evil for us–that didn’t diminish the absolute joy and celebration I feel that He must have had as He turned 30 and began His public ministry.  He knew that as He did this journey He would officially be able to refute all of satan’s claims against God and forever open the pathway for us to be eternally with Him as sons and daughters of the living God.

Do you feel His joy over you?  I do.

May you too, see not just the sacrifices Jesus gave but that He gave them with so much joy and celebration because He loves you.

Dossier and Fundraising Updates

We wanted to update you on more wonderful progress with our adoption!

We received our dossier documents back on February 4th from the Chinese Consulate.


All our documents were now notarized, certified, and authenticated!

February 5th we mailed these precious documents to CCAI, our adoption agency.  I put on social media the above picture with these words, "How can this little stack of papers mean so much? So much time, money, energy...love, longing, prayers. So much."

February 8th we received an email that they had received our dossier.  February 10th we received an email saying that we had all the documents in and that is was now going to go through a critical review process to make sure everything was perfect for China.  February 17th we got an email that our dossier's critical review was completed and that everything looked wonderful!  I am so thankful to God because while we have worked hard and prayed over these documents we had no way of knowing 100% if everything was okay.  Currently the dossier is in translation and they said will be mailed to China within a few days!!  The dossier could be there right after my birthday (Feb. 20th) if they got it mailed out this week!!

We have been doing our Red Envelopes for Yín fundraiser for over a month now and we are so amazingly blessed to have only 34 envelopes left!  If you feel led to, it would mean a lot if you could take one of the remaining envelopes.  If the amounts are too high, team up with a friend or two.  God is providing through people like you!  Thank you.

Here are a few pictures of the fundraising.

One donor commented that the number of envelopes were the same as the number of Psalms and wanted to do the envelope that matched a favorite Psalm.



A former student sending money for a red envelope.



Just one example of the moving cards we have received.



Two of our former students sent their whole allowance (and got mom to chip in) to help bring our girl home!



Check memos:



We have been so blessed.  Thank you to everyone who had donated.  Thank you!

MATCHING Donation!

Update #2:

You crazy amazing beautiful people.  You did it!  On Chinese New Year 2016 you donated enough to match the $1,500 matching donation!!  You did it all in one day instead of a whole week!

I commented to my friend Katie (who is an adoptive mama as well)
 "I am totally blown away. And thankful...humbly thankful beyond words. But you know how this is. 
smile emoticon This generosity that brings your child into your arms. It's crazy amazing grace, isn't it?"

And that is how I feel.  Thank you for being part of this amazing grace.  For being the hands and feet of Jesus to bring our girl home.  We couldn't do this without Him working through you. 

I also wanted to give a red envelope update.  We started with 150 envelopes, now we are down to 66! We are over half way through with our fundraiser.  This is crazy wonderful!  Thank you isn't enough but it will have to do.

Also, we will be sending out the packages hopefully, but we are waiting for the chopstick to arrive.  

_____________________________

UPDATE: Your generosity has blown this away is less than 2 days!!
The donor will now match up to $1,500! 
Please keep donating and sharing....and thank you thank you to everyone who has!

________________________

You want to hear something AMAZING?

An anonymous donor has agreed to match up to $1,000!!!

Which means this is a chance to double the money you give!  If you can donate $20, then the donor will give $20.  All the way up to $1,000!

So here are the rules for this matching donation.

• It is ONE WEEK only - the week of Chinese New Year February 7-14th.
• This only counts for new envelopes taken on our Red Envelopes for Yin fundraiser (click the link here or the tab at the top of the page). Previously-donated money doesn't count toward this. 

It wouldn't take a lot of people to do this, just a few dedicated.

10 people giving $100
              OR
20 people giving $50
              OR
40 people giving $25

This is such a tremendous blessing - it would mean a lot if you could share this link and donate.

Thank you for partnering with us!

Notary, Secretary of State, and Chinese Consulate!

There has been some very exciting steps for us recently.  We wanted to share these with you!

On January 19th we got our addendum to our home study.  That meant we had all the paperwork for the dossier!

CELEBRATE having all our documents!

So January 20th Edmund and I drove to our Secretary of State's office to get all the documents certified.  The people there were so kind and helpful there, from the guard at the entrance who directed me the correct way, to the ladies who collected the documents to be certified.  I was so thankful.

We were finished there in less than 30 minutes!  I took our certified documents and headed toward the mailing place I have been using.

CELEBRATE all our documents being certified!

We went to this mail place I have been using (Edmund was so good this entire day and I thank God for this!) and had copies made, money-order purchased, and finally got all of our documents mailed off to our courier in New York to bring to the Chinese Consulate!

CELEBRATE all our documents being sent for this final step before we send them all to our agency!

That was on Wednesday.  On Friday night we got a huge snow storm.  But I was tracking our package and it made it there Friday afternoon.  I was so thankful to God that He got it there before the snow so I wouldn't be worrying about it.

On Tuesday, January 26th I got an email from our courier saying that our documents were at the Chinese Consulate and they would be mailed back to us on the 4th! 

CELEBRATE our documents being at the Chinese Consulate!

So, this Friday I will be excitedly tracking our package to come back to us so that I can make more copes and send it off to our agency, CCAI!

We have also started fundraising!  Some of you know but we have been applying for grants and have had 3 denials so far.  So we have decided to go ahead with fundraising.  As of last night we had 47 of 150 envelopes donated for!  We are almost 1/3 of the day through our fundraiser.  There are small, medium, and large amounts left. We really are humbled and so appreciative of each sacrifice to given to bring our little girl home.

Continue to pray for us, please.  And for Yin to come home soon.  So, very soon.

Names and Baby Journals

I posted this picture on my Instagram account over eight months ago.  Way before we announced our adoption publicly, and before we even had told most of our family that we had definitely decided to adopt.

My caption said:
New journal tonight. ❤️

That night we started journaling to our little girl.  Much in the same way that we journaled to Edmund the first day we found out we were pregnant (his journal is the animal print on the left, hers is the right with the umbrellas).

As we've been journaling to her I have wanted a name to call her.  An endearment of some kind in Chinese.  But when I tried to look up words and their translations I didn't feel like any of them fit.  So I just left it alone and hope at some point to find the right endearment.

One Saturday when my step-dad and mom came back from church they were sharing about what they had studied in church.  One thing that my step-dad shared was how in Genesis 20 there is a word when dealing with Sarah that has a root word that in Hebrew means "longed for."  I immediately thought of our daughter and how she is deeply longed for.  But when I did a brief search I couldn't find the Hebrew word.

Shortly after that I was reading Proverbs and felt that I should stop at a particular verse and do verse mapping.  (Verse mapping is an incredible Bible study tool, I highly recommend it!)  As I got to the part where I look up the original words and their meanings I remembered about Genesis 20, so I paused and went there using the app I use for word study during verse mapping.  When I found the verse I pulled up the word "silver" and then clicked into the root word.  The root word for silver is kacaph which means, "to long for, yearn for, long after, to long for deeply."

And suddenly I thought, what if "silver" translated in Chinese was something nice and easy that I could call our daughter?  Something that to me and in Hebrew meant deeply longed for?  So I looked it up.

The translation for silver is Yín.

Simple and perfect.  I felt a rush of peace and joy.  I had a name to call her.  An endearment that shows exactly how I feel for her.

Yín, deeply longed for.

银

Can I be honest?

This week has been a rollercoaster for me emotionally.

Monday was incredible!  We got our 1-800A approval.  The last big piece to our dossier!

 Tuesday morning I read during morning worship “Like the endless movement of stars and planets, God’s plans are not rushed or delayed.” (Messiah p. 21)  I felt God calling me to peace and joy during this journey of so much waiting.

Tuesday I wrote a blog for Established in Grace that would go live Thursday about what God has shared with me Tuesday about waiting.

Wednesday I saw a beautiful little girl on Show Hope's website, and inquired to know more about her with our agency.  She will most likely be matched with someone who has been waiting much longer than we have.  That made me wonder how long we'd have to wait to be matched.  The average time is 18-24 months.

Thursday I called our agency to find out more about our timeline.  The lady I spoke to went over our medical checklist and said that someone else who had a similar checklist had waited 28 months from start to being matched.  Which means it was probably about 32 months until they went and got their child.

Thirty-two months.  32 months.  Thirty-two months.

That is about 6 months longer than the longest I was hoping for.  It might sound silly to you, but I felt crushed.  Six months isn't forever, but when we're only about 5 months into this process it feels like forever.  I want to be with her now.

Then we went and got all of our paperwork, that wasn't already notorized, notorized.

Even though getting all that notorized is a big step (we only have certification and authentication left before mailing it to our agency to go to China!) I felt sad.  As I thought about the blog that went live I also felt like a fraud.  Who was I to write positive things about trusting God and waiting in peace and joy when I felt so sad?  This longing is something I've never experienced before.

Then after getting the papers notorized we grabbed Taco Bell and ran home to meet my Aunt Shari who had given us a Christmas gift of going to Winter Jam and babysitting Edmund.

We were sitting in our seats and Matthew asked me how I felt.  I said sad.  I was thinking about our girl and how long it would be until I could hold her.  To make matters worse the sponsor of the event was Holt International.  So there were videos and speakers who shared  moving stories about children who weren't wanted and needed to be adopted.  All I could think was, I am trying to adopt but it's so hard, complicated, and so long.  So very long.

After the intermission we moved to the front to hear and sing with Crowder.  I love David Crowder.  When you go to a concert the words are on the screen and it is a big praise session to God.  So one of the songs started.  It is called, "I Am."

Here are the beginning of the lyrics:

"There's no space that His love can't reach
There's no place where we can't' find peace
There's no end to amazing grace

Take me in with Your arms spread wide
Take me in like an orphan child
Never let go
Never leave my side

I am
Holding on to you
I am
Holding on to you
In the middle of the storm
I am holding on
I am"

I didn't really remember the first verse, but when it came to the chorus I closed my eyes and sang to Jesus. I wanted Him to hold me and was thanking Him for holding me.  I put one of my hands to my heart and my fingers touched my necklace. And my fingers curled around it instinctively.

My cousin Brianna gave me this beautiful necklace for Christmas.  I've been wearing it basically non-stop since then.  I like tangible things to hold on to, to represent the intangible.  So when I wear it and feel it I think of our daughter and pray for her.

So in that moment.  The chorus is starting.

Thousands are singing, "I am...Holding on to you..."

My hand touches my heart to communicate to God my heart's longing and my hand touches the precious reminder of my daughter.  

Thousands continue to sing, "I am....Holding on to you...In the middle of the storm....I am holding on...I am!"

And inside God spoke, outside of me in the song God spoke. These words you are singing. They are for her.  For your little girl. I AM holding on to her.  In whatever storms she goes through.  However long it takes to bring her to you.  I AM holding on to her.  I always have, I AM, and I always will be holding on to her.

It's just like that -- I was alone in that moment. With God speaking to me through song.

I AM
Holding on to her
I AM
Holding on to her
In the middle of her storms
I AM holding on
I AM

At the right time, at exactly the right time, God will bring us together. And He has been, is, and will always be holding on to her.

And to me.

My heart still grieve the time we will be apart.  But I AM is holding on to her and I just keep sing those words in my heart and praying for her to come home soon.



Thank you Aunt Shari for your gift that went beyond just a concert.  Thank you Brianna for a gift that goes beyond just a symbol.  God used your gifts to speak peace to me this week during a very hard time.