Our Trip to Meet Christy!

Nearly two weeks ago, Daryl and I headed out to fly to the other side of the world, to meet our daughter, Christy.  What an adventure!  Our travel to go see her was uneventful, except that I was struggling with a cold.  We left on Thursday, had a short layover in Paris, had a long layover in London (got to see the British Museum), and then flew to the capitol of her country (south east Europe).  After one night's sleep (well, we kind of slept), we were driven to the city where where she lives in a group home.  After sleeping there, and a morning walk along the river and seeing some of the town, we were driven to see here. We were allowed to visit with her three times for three days.  On our last visit (Thursday) I had come down with a new cold (the first cold had been conquered by Monday), so only Daryl went (no photos of that visit).  He found that Christy was also coming down with that cold, as well as several other children there and some of the workers - even the director!

 Here's some highlights of our visits with her....

Day 1, First Visit

Our first ever hug!  She just melted in my arms!

                                  

I was able to feed her lunch and dinner every day!

Day 2 Second Visit - 

This visit was incredible.  She was a little sleepy when we got there as she had just woken up and had a snack.  We played with her for a while and then we were able to take her out into the backyard.  I held and hugged her for a while - she really loves snuggling.  Then Daryl took her and a miracle happened before my eye - I can't describe it, but I can show you the videos!

Right before our eyes her character and personality just blossomed.  She began cooing and babbling and that turned into laughter!  What a thrill to experience all that on our first day.  She also cuddled with her daddy too - here are my favorite photos from the day, plus a few more too!

Christy meeting her family through a photo album I created
that my sister had gifted to us!

She gives hugs just like Esther does, with her hand turned out!

Day Two - 

She loves be bounced, and love playing on the play mat with the ping pong ball we brought.  With some experimenting we found that the she enjoyed rough housing.  She loved it when Daryl would roll her over from her tummy to her back, and also if he slid her across the mat.  But her favorite was being spun around.  She would laugh and laugh and laugh!  We were delighted.

She loves to talk and has a great time expressing herself!

But she also loves her cuddle time too!

She is most definitely a Daddy's Girl!

Third Day - Amazing Bonding~

Butterfly Kisses!

We were able to go with her to watch her receive her bi-weekly physical therapy!

One Very Happy Girl - She Loves to Play!

If you want to read all the things I wrote about the details of our trip, including our travel, visit my blog about this trip - Connecting With Christy!

We will be going back to to bring her home sometime around February if all goes well with the paperwork and legal process.  Please pray for this to go smoothly!

We Have Our Travel Dates!

So excited for these photos to become a reality!

We are to arrive in country a week from Saturday!  This timing is perfect for us for so many reasons!  God's timing is always perfect!

So close!  So much to do!  So glad I at least made a list of what to pack!  I won't even be able to do much until after Saturday as my son is getting married!  I don't think I will ever have a month as exciting as this October is turning out to be!

We will not be able to publicly post the photos of our trip, but I will be setting up a private blog to share photos while we are in country and once we return.  If you want to be able to be a part of this new blog, please comment below and I will try to include you!

We will be having visits with Christy each day, Monday through Thursday.  In addition to the Shutterfly photo album, we are also bringing her a little soft photo album that will have one of each of her siblings on each page to help her get familiar with their faces.  I have also ordered a record-able book, so she can hear me read to her even when I am no longer with her!

We have gotten our Written Referral!

One more step under our belt, and the next is just around the corner!

We should hear tomorrow, and if not then, very soon, when we can travel to meet Christy (Priscilla)!  It could mean that we leave in as little as a week and a half!

To prepare for our trip to meet Christy, I created a Shutterfly photo album to give to her.  She'll be keeping it so she can continue to remember us and get to know our family and home too!  You can look at it here:

Click here to view this photo book larger

You'll love Shutterflys award-winning photo books. Try it today.

Praise God! Awesome Announcement, Plus Something Special!

Our Dossier was approved at the adoption committee meeting yesterday in Priscilla's country!  This is called the "verbal referral".  This is a HUGE step in my book.  There are a couple of other HUGE steps in the process, but this is the really the first HUGE step!  I am so excited I am shaking!  I really didn't not think our dossier would even see the light of day at that meeting!

PRAISE GOD!  The sooner each step happens, the soon this precious little girl will be released from an orphanage and begin a real life of learning and growing!

I was even looking at luggage yesterday when I was shopping for something to wear to Jeremy's wedding.  Marshall's had some very nice, discounted luggage.  I will have to go take another look again soon!

So, what's next?  Our dossier will need to get a signature from the Minister of Justice.  I was told that this will take 2 - 3 weeks.  That is called the "Written Referral."  When we get our Written Referral we will also get the dates when we can travel to meet her!  It looks from her like our trip will be either late October or early November.

We have had a little secret that we were waiting for a special time to share with all of you, and now is that moment - we intend to change her name!  Priscilla is not her real name.  Her real name I can not share online, but is sounds a lot like Priscilla.  But in her videos, the ladies working with her call her "Prissy."  While that sounds like a cute name, in our culture, being "prissy" in our culture is not exactly a good connotation, is it?  So last spring and early summer Daryl and I were working on coming up with a name that we liked that would have a nick name that would sound like her nick name.  We have chosen to keep her real name (yet to be announced after she is officially ours), as her middle name. So this is to announce to the world, that we have chosen a name for our new daughter.....

We will be calling her "Christy" for a nickname as it sounds so similar to "Prissy."  We have already begun to refer to her as Christy in our home and will even begin to do this with other as we share new of her, so that when she comes home (oh that sounds good), we will be used to calling her that and not "Priscilla."

"Christiana" means follower of Christ.  Her real (future) middle name (the one that is her first name now) means "Glory" or "the glory of."  So her two names can mean the glory of a follower of Christ, or the glory of following Christ.  I LOVE this!  Have you ever thought about the fact that if you are a follower of Christ, that your have been ADOPTED into the family of God?  Have you ever thought about how adoption is a wonderful physical example of our adoption into God's family?  I have thought on this a little in the past, but not really and truly dwelt on it until more recent months.

Now, as an adoptive parent, I see so much more.  I see more of God in adoption.  "Christy" is like a future believer who has not felt the call of God in her life.  She has done NOTHING to earn our love.  We love her because she is ours.  God has given us this love, as He is the author of Love.  We have loved her before she could even imagine loving us.  Do you see it?

A future believer often has no idea that God even exists, let alone loves him/her.  Christy has no idea that we even exist.  She has no idea that we love her...she may even have no idea what love it.  She has no idea that we have been working for months to bring her home.  We have been loving her and praying for her.  We have been working with so many people and entities in order to set everything up for the blessed day when she will finally know that we exist. So many people are praying for her too.  That day is rapidly coming, but she has no idea!  It's like that first time that a future believer stumbles across the message of salvation.  He/she has no idea that so much work was done to make that happen in their life.  But God had it planed for years/decades/centuries...really from the foundation of the earth.  We have been planning and working on bringing Christy to the point of "finding" us, yet she still has no idea.  Do you see it?

I now realize that God has truly loved me with an everlasting love - one that stretches back forever, and stretches on into eternity.  (I know, that is where earthly adoption shows that is is only a glimpse into our adoption by God, but that makes it so much better, as adoption is such a wonderful thing, and yet we can know that our adoption by God into His family is so much more glorious!).

So, very soon, we will plan that moment when Christy will first find out that we even exist.  That moment when her eyes will see us standing before her.  She will really have no idea what it all means, and that we are going to be her parents.  But she will know that we exist.  We will spend a couple of hours with her each day, in the morning and then again in the afternoon.  For five short days.  Then we will be seemingly gone from her life.  But not completely.  We plan to purchase a little book that we can use to record our voices reading this book to her in English.  Her caretaker will be able to help her to listen/read this book everyday while we are working to bring her home.  We will also be leaving a little photo album of our family and our home for her to look at each day too.  So she will continue to become familiar with our faces and get used to the images of her future home.  We can hope that she will grow in her familiarity of us and our home and maybe, just maybe, begin to love us in return. Do you see it? 

 Do you see that God gave us that?  He has given us His Holy Spirit so we can hear the voice of God.  He has given us His Holy Word so that we can get a glimpse of our eternal home.  Both before the moment of our salvation and after, He gave us His book that is a recording of His love for us and who our family is.  Do you see it?

There will come a day that Christy will be ours, 100% ours.  She will become a part of our family.  She will learn so many things.  She will be fed and she will grow.  It might take years for her to truly understand all that is being done and all that will be done to make her a part of our family, but she will know.  She will know that she is loved.  Do you see it?

If you don't see what I am sharing with you, and you are not a part of God's family, then maybe this is the moment that God has been preparing for you.  He has been loving your since the foundation of the earth.  He has been loving you and preparing for the moment when you become aware that He has been working to bring you into His family.  He even sent His son, Jesus Christ, to earth over 2000 years ago to take your sins upon Himself and to pay the penalty for every one of them, so that you can become His child.  But you need to do something.  You need to believe that Christ is the Son of God, that he lived a perfect, sinless life.  You need to believe that He took your sins upon Himself as He hung on the cross.  That He died in your place.  He paid the penalty for your sin.  You need to believe that He conquered death by rising from the dead on the third day so that you might have eternal life with Him.  All you need to do is believe, confess your sinfulness and ask God to save you.  He's been working and waiting.  He knew you would be in His family.  He chose you.  So ask Him today - ask Him to come into your life, to save you from your sins and to become Lord of your life.  No longer to live in your old ways, but to become a part of the family of God.  To live a new life.  To grow in your love for Him and to learn to live a life that pleases him.  A life that reflects the love of God to the world.  A life that brings glory to God.  

Do you see it now?

If you need to know more about how to become a child of God. please visit This Website or contact a pastor or believer that you know to find help to be adopted into God's family.

Our Dossier has been Submitted!

We received news early this morning that today in Priscilla's country (it's night time there now) our dossier was registered with the Minister of Justice's (MOJ) office!  This was the news we have been hoping to hear for a while now.

What's next?  Our dossier needs to be approved by the adoption committee.  They were supposed to have their first meeting after the month long holiday, but it was cancelled.  I have no idea when the next meeting will be and whether or not our dossier will even come to the top of the stack at that meeting.

Once the committee has approved our dossier, we will get "verbal referral" (and we start packing!) and then it is sent on to the MOJ and once she/he signs it we get our "written referral" and the allowed dates for travelling to meet her.  The travel dates are usually a 3 week time period that start about 1 - 2 weeks from the time of getting the notice.

When we travel we will be in her country Monday - Friday.  So we will leave the weekend before and return home the next weekend.

Please pray that the timing of this trip will work nicely with preparing for and experiencing the marriage of our son - a first for us!

There's so much to do - prepare for the wedding (purchase clothes for family and make and purchse gifts etc), get appropriate suitcases, make packing lists, attend a bridal shower and all the while continue to run our home, run my home business and homeschool our children!  But by God's grace, I will accomplish all that He has for me to do each day!

It's official - Nothing Left to do but WAIT!

We recieved our I800a approval a week ago, we got it notarized that same day and mailed out to be apostilled.  I arrived back in today's mail and it was back in the mail today on it's way to our adoption agent, who will forward it to join the rest of our dossier in Priscilla' country!

Right now, all the government in her country is on a month long holiday, so nothing is happening there as far as adoptions go.  But it looks like our dossier will be all ready (translated and verified) to be submitted the day they open up again!

Praying for God's perfect timing for our trip, as we are also going to be having our son get married on October 12, and it's looking more and more like our trip to meet Priscilla might be in very close proximity to that glorious event!

But I know that God has this thing all dialed for our best and His glory!

So there won't be much news until September, so enjoy these last weeks of summer (while we start school next week!).

Thank you so much for your prayers and support!

Happy Birthday Priscilla!

Today Priscilla turns 3 years old.  

Three years ago Priscilla was born to a first time mother, 4 weeks premature, via C-Section.  That day her mother found out that her baby girl had special needs and a medical condition - that her baby's heart had a defect.  I often picture her mother as being hard-hearted.  That upon hearing that her child had Down Syndrome that she just walked away.  But we do not know that.  In Priscilla's country most of the people are poor, and most women work to make ends meet.  Facing the difficulty of raising a child with special needs and ongoing medical needs is difficult even in the best of situations, but in Priscilla's country this is nearly impossible for most people.  I'm sure that Priscilla's biological mother remembers the day Priscilla was born, and the day she said goodbye to Priscilla.  I don't know her heart, but I'm sure it was not an easy thing to do.  Today I pray for Priscilla's mother that she will know the love of God and He will save her soul and that someday, somehow, she will know that her precious little baby girl is so loved that we are coming from the other side of the world to bring Priscilla into our home and give her the love and care that she could not.

Today Priscilla has no idea that she has a family working so hard to adopt her.  She probably doesn't even know it's her birthday.  She, in all likelihood, will not get to have a cake or open presents.  But, Lord Willing, this will be her last birthday that goes by without fanfare.  I was also reminded today that even though we are not with her on her birthday, she is not alone.  Our heavenly Father, who orchestrated all the events in her life in order to bring about her being adopted into our family, is by her side as He always is.  He remembers the day she was born.  He knows the hours she was conceived and He created her to be exactly as she is and determined even before she was born that she would become our child through adoption.  If you haven't read it yet, please take a minute and read my blog post about how Priscilla's Story Really Started in 2008!  I share there how we can see God's handi-work that dates back to before Priscilla's birth, and how He began something the month she was conceived that would ultimately lead to our reaching out to adopt her!

And God gave us a gift for her birthday - today we found out that last Thursday we had been approved to adopt a child from a Hague approved country.  We were gone camping last week, so we  didn't find out until today, Priscilla's birthday, that we had been approved.  God knew that today would be hard for me, so He made it possible for us to get this good news today - isn't He so loving!  And I just heard that this document arrived in today's mail!  Yeah!

So now our I800a application has been approved.  We should get the approval letter through the mail very soon - maybe even today!  Once it arrives, I'll head in to town to get it notarized, and then send it off to get apostilled in Olympia.  Once it returns, I send it on to join the rest of our dossier.  Once it's translated, then everything is authenticated and then it our dossier is finally ready to be submitted!

Once it's submitted, it will wait it's turn to get reviewed.  Then once it is approved and gets the officially signature, we will get our referral and we will be notified that we can go on our first trip to meet her!

Right now, things are a bit backlogged in her country due to a change in the government, and they also take the month of August off as a holiday.  So the best we can hope is that our referral will come sometime in September, but it could be well into October before we hear anything.  It's looking more and more like our trip to meet Priscilla will be in very close proximity to our son's wedding.

I just keep reminding myself that every step of this journey is in the control of my heavenly Father and that our first, and second, trip will be exactly when He has determined it to be best for us to go!