He Cares for You

Our little girl should be sleeping now. I wonder how her day went. Did she have enough to eat? Was she warm enough? Did someone hold her when she was sad? Did she feel safe when she fell asleep? Is she in an orphanage or a foster home? Does she have one "ai yi" or several? ("Ai yi" is Chinese for auntie and is pronounced "eye yi.") We don't know who her caretakers are, but we thank God for them and pray for them daily. We pray that they will not feel burdened by the children under their care, but that they will show love to them. We ask God to bless them and send someone to them to show them the way to Jesus. And then we put them and our daughter into the hands of our Ultimate Caretaker and trust Him to bless and provide for them all. Today, may you also know that you can cast all your burdens on Him because He cares for you (1 Peter 5:7).

Decision to be Matched

After spending much time in prayer, David and I decided to ask our agency to match us with a child from the new list of special needs children that will be released some time in the next week or two. Many of you know how we have agonized over whether to continue to pursue adopting a child named Jade. We are at peace with this decision and trust God will provide a godly, loving family for her. There is a family that is hoping to adopt her. Please pray for them to have favor and for every door to be opened for them so that they can make her their own.

We are confident that He has already chosen a child for our family and are excited about being matched. Please pray for Lily, a Chinese woman who works with our agency in China to match waiting children with their new families. When the new list comes out, she will look through the list to choose a child for us. We are confident that God has already chosen a child for our family and are trusting Him to work through her to match us with our daughter. Thank you so much for your prayers as we have made this decision. We are watching with anticipation to see what God is going to do. We could be parents before Christmas! We will be sharing pictures with you as soon as we have them!

Pregnant with paperwork

Paper, paper and more paper. We have had a different kind of pregnancy that has involved collecting papers: birth cirtificates, marriage license, background checks, letters verifying employment, documents telling how much money we make, medical forms, etc. So many pieces of paper! We are very happy to announce that today was the day that the paperchase ended! We have gotten everything we need to send our dossier to China. Praise God that He has helped us persevere until it was accomplished. Now we ask Him to help us to be patient as we send the paper off China and wait for the time that we can go bring home our little girl!

Waiting...

Wow! It’s hard to believe we started this journey three years ago. It took us a while to finish our dossier for China, but it was logged in at the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA) on March 19, 2007. By that time we knew the wait would be a long time, but we didn’t realize how long it was going to be. (We still don’t know how long it will be before that dossier is processed and we travel to China to bring home our child.) It was even harder to think that we were not allowed to start the process to adopt another child while we waited.

As the wait got longer, we got more frustrated with China, with ourselves, and with God. It was a very difficult time not knowing when, or if, we would ever meet our children (we asked for twins in our original dossier). Each night we prayed for our children and hoped the day would come soon. It seemed like an impossible situation, and it became harder to remember that God likes to do the impossible.

Spring forward to March of 2009. I (Lois) was taking Beth Moore’s Bible study on Esther. In lesson five, she talks about waiting. I was so convicted when she read Isaiah 40:31 and said your strength will be lost and depleted if you’re waiting on an event or a person. The verse actually says that God will give strength to those who wait on Him. I realized that the date of that Bible study was March 19, the two year anniversary of our log-in-date. God knew exactly what time it was. (There is more to that story, but I will not write it here.)

A week later, we went to a training course given by our adoption agency. Our social worker, Karla, told us that China had created a new option for people like us waiting for years to adopt one of their children. If we qualified, we would be able to leave our paperwork in line for a healthy child, and apply to adopt a child with a minor special need which would take much less time. After praying for a few days, we asked Karla to do some research to see if we qualified for the program. It took a long time because China has changed the requirements since we completed our first dossier, and she wanted to be sure we qualified. Finally, in July all of our questions were answered and we felt a peace about starting the process again: interviews, information forms, medical exams, HIV tests, fingerprints, background checks, and much more.

At this point, our home study has been finished! Our agency is ready to match us with a child. Our dossier is almost finished. Once we are matched, they tell us that it will take six months to complete everything that the U.S. and Chinese governments require in order to travel. We have asked our agency to hold off matching us for now as we inquire into adopting a specific child named Jade. She is the foster child of friends in China. We know that God has a perfect plan for Jade's future and for our family. We are just asking Him to show us His plan. Our desire is that He be glorified in every step we take on this journey. Isaiah 26:8 says, "Yes, LORD, walking in the way of your laws, we wait for you; your name and renown are the desire of our hearts."

We want to thank all of you who have joined us on this journey. Many of you have been and are praying for us. We are very grateful for your prayers. It has been a long wait, but God is reminding us how He has worked through difficult situations in our lives before. We are thankful that He is renewing our strength each day as we wait to see what He does.