Yes, I know this is a surprise, not something we thought was going to happen now but it has and we are thrilled and cannot wait to bring her home. Here is our story;

(several people have mentioned to me that they tried to leave a message and couldn't. I think I have adjusted the settings to make that possible so try again)



Years ago I remember flipping through a magazine and seeing an article about the abandoned girls in Ch*na. I can still see the photograph of a little girl laying on the sidewalk and everyone just walking by like she was no more important than the litter scattered around her. The image has always been there and that is probably the moment that I first thought about adopting from Ch*na. Fast forward a few years. John and I are married we have two healthy baby boys and I start to think about adopting that little girl in Ch*na again. Honestly, John wasn't for it or against it he just wasn't sure if he wanted more kids. Then we became pregnant and lost a little girl. That was so hard for me. I always dreamed of having a little girl and it was devastating to lose her.That stirred up in me the desire to have another child. I was scared to get pregnant again so naturally I thought of Ch*na again. I started to pray that if it was God's will for our daughter to come from Ch*na then he was going to have to work towards preparing John's heart for adoption. Without going into a lot of detail some things happened with John's job and the expense of adopting a child was no longer an option. Then as you know we got pregnant, again, twice and had two more amazing little boys. Our boys are everything and I love them more than anything in this world but the desire to have a daughter would not go away. I prayed for it to go away. Four children was enough, how could we possibly raise a fifth and how in the world would John ever go for that? Well that desire did not go away and little did I know it began to grow more strongly in John. As time went by I knew we had a daughter in Ch*na, I absolutely knew it. I strategically picked our anniversary trip to the mountains in July 2007 to talk about adopting to John. It was now or never. When I brought it up I was surprised when he said "let's do it". We knew the wait for a child was getting longer and didn't want to waste time. We went to an adoption seminar and was told the wait was currently 2 to 2 1/2 years. That was perfect. We gathered all the documents, got physicals, got fingerprinted and sent everything to Ch*na in December 2007. We were so excited! Well it didn't take long for me to realize that there was not going to be a 2 to 2 1/2 year wait for us, it was going to be MUCH longer! We are not sure why but there has been a major slow down in adoptions and we were facing a wait of possible 4-8 years. What??? I almost drove myself crazy on the Internet, reading peoples blogs, checking on how long it was taking. I became weary. We didn't want to wait that long, who wants to be 65 when there child graduates from high school? Well we knew we didn't. Our only options were to switch to another country or switch to the Special Needs list. After talking with my adoption agency we decided to switch to Russia. I felt uneasy about it but we proceeded anyway. After all the paperwork was done and we were about to send it in we went out to eat one night. When we walked in the door there were two little Asian girls sitting with there American family. It was in that moment that I knew without a doubt our daughter was in Ch*na. John and I talked about it and decided that we would not send our paperwork to Russia and we would wait on Ch*ina. At that point we starting to consider the Special Needs list. Every month our agency sends us a list of Special Needs kids who need a home. Every month we look at that list. Well on October 28 we got a new list. There was a little girl with a minor need but she was older than we had originally planned on . When we got the email with all her information and we first saw her face, we knew, this was her. This was the child God had planned for us. We quickly called our agency and requested to "lock her In". That means we have 48 hours to make a decision. I had prayed that if this was not our daughter for God to close the doors. No doors were closed, they were opened. You see God used our desire for a daughter to turn our hearts toward adoption and used the long wait to lead us to this child on the Special Needs list. Everything fell into place and we officially sent in our Letter of Intent (to adopt) on October 31, 2008. We had to wait for Ch*na to send us a Pre Approval (PA). We didn't tell anyone until we had PA from Ch*na. We received PA on November 13th. Now we wait again. We expect to go sometime in the next 3 to 7 months to Ch*na to get her. We don't expect everyone to understand what we are doing but we do ask for your support and prayers. This girls world is going to be turned upside down and even though she will have a better life it will still be hard for her for a while. I cannot post her picture because we are not allowed to per our agency. I am going to start a locked blog so that I can post pictures and details about everything in privacy. If you would like access to that blog please leave a post here with your email address and I will send you the password when the blog is started or just email me and I will email you back. Tonight I am praising God for this Blessing and Thanking him for opening our hearts to the gift of adoption.