LOA!!!!!!!!!

After waiting only 19 days we received our Letter of Approval from China on Monday, September 24th!!  This makes everything official and I can finally share her picture!  The average wait time for this is usually 50-60 days so we could not believe it!  God is so good and we feel so blessed.  It happened so quickly that we were not ready for the next step and had to quickly get our I800 prepared.  We were able to send that on Tuesday afternoon, so now we wait again.  Unfortunately, that is the hardest part of  this whole process.  Once you receive one thing, you begin the wait for the next step.  It is totally out of our hands and we continue to trust the Lord and His timing!  While we wait we are busy filling out paperwork to apply for adoption grants.  These are not hard, but require a lot of time preparing paperwork.  We know that God has called us to adopt and we are trusting that He will provide what we need when we need it.  We are praying that we will be able to travel early December and be home for Christmas, but we won't know for sure about our travel dates until at least November.  Please continue to pray that the next few steps go quickly.  We are ready to meet our little girl and bring her home.  She has been prayed for by so many for a long time.  It is so exciting to watch this happen.  God has truly blessed our family!

Pre-Approval!

On Wednesday, September 5, we received our Pre-Approval notice from China.  Now we wait for our Letter of Approval.  Right now the wait time is anywhere from 2-4 months.  We are praying that we will have it by the end of October.  Every day that goes by is one day closer to holding her in my arms.

Praise God from whom ALL blessings flow!!

The day finally came... A day I was beginning to feel would never come.  We received an email Monday, August 27th at 10:12pm with a picture of the most adorable 18 month old little girl.  Tony and I could.not.believe it was finally happening!  She is just precious!  If we could get on a plane today and go get her we would.  But, we will have to wait until probably January to travel to China.  The last seven months have been hard waiting for her, but now that we see her face I know these next 4-5 months will be even harder.  We always trusted the Lord and knew that His timing would be perfect, but the disappointment we felt each month was heartbreaking.  We knew He had called us to do this and He would carry us through, but there were days we wondered if the day would ever come.  He is faithful though and we give Him all the praise!  We are in love with her already!  The kids are also so excited and can't wait for us to bring her home!  So, now we wait for our Pre-Approval notice.  Please pray that these next steps will go quickly.  We feel so blessed that God has allowed us to draw closer to Him through the miracle of adoption.  It has been a HaPpY week.... we will NEVER be the same!!