The past couple of months have been a wild ride!! We have seen God answer so many prayers! We are so happy to announce that today we are officially DTC!! For those outside of the realm of adoption acronyms, this means that our Dossier has been sent To China! This is one of the biggest steps throughout the entire process. At this point everything is completely out of our hands for now and we wait mercilessly for the wonderful workers at the CCCWA offices in China to do their part. This is also often described as one of the hardest parts of the wait because you move from busy, busy busy with the never-ending paper chase to a screeching halt. But it doesn't matter if the wait is a breeze for you or agonizing, any person who has been through the process knows how much we wanted to jump up and down and scream for joy at seeing those 3 letters in our inbox this morning!!
This last few weeks, we have had a few more ups and downs. After we found out that we had been awarded the $4,000 grant, we emailed our agency and asked what was next. They had to first request the money. This organization likes to wait to send the money once the family is within 4 months or less of traveling. Since we weren't DTC yet, we weren't sure if we would be considered within that time frame yet. But since we needed this money in order to be DTC, our agency said they would go ahead and request it. Thankfully, they said that they would disburse the funds now, but that it could take up to 4 weeks for the money to arrive at the agency. Cue the sound of screeching tires in our minds. We were so close, and yet these few words once again put us on edge. The agency needed the money in their account in the next 8 days in order to be able to send our paperwork "as scheduled." Whatever that means, right?! So we did what we could do. We prayed.
Fast forward those 8 days. We woke up that morning feeling a little ho-hum because the deadline had arrived and we hadn't heard anything about the money arriving. We had been checking our email almost first thing every morning just hoping to see something, but for some reason, we didn't that morning. We went ahead and had breakfast and did our morning things. And then all of a sudden, Justin says "Whoa!! Do you see this?!" We had an email informing us that we had been awarded a $10,000 grant from another grant organization that we had applied to. We sat stunned for a few minutes, and let the fact sink in that this meant we were for the most part fully funded for the rest of our adoption! Then the first person to move was actually our son Stephen. He got up, jumped up and down, and said "we are getting this boy!" while I sat there crying.
I immediately emailed our agency and told them the news and they replied back saying that they had the check 2 days before but weren't allowed to say anything until we had been notified from the organization. All we could do was laugh. Because sometimes God is just hilarious in the way that He answers prayer!!!
This was on Wednesday, May 18. Then three days later on Saturday, we woke up to an email that said "Rejection at the Embassy" in the subject line. My heart sank as I read that the Chinese embassy was rejecting 3 of our documents. In order for them to authenticate that our documents were real and legitimate, they have to be notarized by a US notary. Well, because we live overseas, we don't have access to a US notary, except for the Consulate. So back in March we had taken the 7 hour trip to our US Consulate and paid $300 USD to notarize our documents by a US notary. But the new Chinese consulate in DC said that they would not accept any documents that originated in another country, even though they were notarized at the consulate. Yeah, don't ask. It's not even worth trying to explain sometimes. Fortunately, only 3 of our documents were affected by this and they were easily reproducible. I replied to her email and ask if we needed to make a new copy and send them to our Power of Attorney in the States in order for them to be notarized there and therefore become more "legit" than if we had signed the papers ourselves here. Ha! She replied back within a few hours and said that she had heard back from the CCCWA (Chinese Adoption Association) that they would accept the documents as is, notarized by the US Consulate, without being authenticated. YAY!
So here we are, today, May 25, with three big letters hovering in our minds, and for the first time in months we feel like we are finally able to completely exhale. And we celebrate. No matter what lies ahead, because we are sure that there are plenty of other bumps waiting to be jumped over, we are incredibly grateful for today. And this whole thing is finally beginning to seem real.
Wednesday, May 25, 2016
Sunday, May 8, 2016
Mother's Day
Happy Mother's Day! I woke up this morning in a hotel because we are on our way to some meetings. In many ways, it's just another day for our family. But we also love to travel and so it's an exciting time when we get to go somewhere new. When I woke up this morning, we had a message on our phone from Justin's brother asking if we were awake. I happened to be the first and only one up. I don't sleep very well in hotels most of the time. So I replied to his message. He said that they were just so excited for us about the news! The only problem was that I had no earthly idea what the news was. We had a great friend that owns a restaurant in our hometown that had agreed to do a fundraiser for us at her restaurant and we were expecting to hear news about how that went, so that was the first thing that entered my mind. When I asked him what news? He said, are you being sarcastic or do you really not know? Now my curiosity was going crazy. I had just woken up, so I didn't know anything. Well, it turns out that they had received a letter to us from one of the grant organizations that we had applied for saying that they were pleased to inform us we had been awarded a $4,000 grant!!
Once again, I find myself humbled beyond compare before a God who sees and who cares. This is officially, the second best Mother's Day I've ever had. The first best was 7 years ago, the day that my husband and I decided to put Christ first in our lives and do whatever it took to bring healing and restoration to our family and our home. We are so thankful for His provision and how He has taken a situation that seemed like a mountain to us and has tossed it aside more like an anthill!!
Once again, I find myself humbled beyond compare before a God who sees and who cares. This is officially, the second best Mother's Day I've ever had. The first best was 7 years ago, the day that my husband and I decided to put Christ first in our lives and do whatever it took to bring healing and restoration to our family and our home. We are so thankful for His provision and how He has taken a situation that seemed like a mountain to us and has tossed it aside more like an anthill!!
Friday, May 6, 2016
Humbled and Grateful
Just an update for our family's sake and anyone who is actually interested in the process that wants to read our journey, give some details about what it looked like to get here.
We began this journey, as most families do, with a timeline in front of them and high hopes that ours would actually be smooth, unlike most other families that seem to hit huge bumps in the road. HA. First mistake. Actually, we knew that obstacles and hurdles were going to come up, and we have had our bumps. Our wiggle room is getting smaller and our next steps are feeling farther and farther away. We spent the majority of the month of March feverishly applying for grants. We applied for a total of 10 grants. To the unsuspecting eye, that may not seem like a big deal. It's just an application. In one sense, yes, that is true. But the truth is, these applications are almost just as involved, if not more on some levels, as the initial application to begin the adoption process. And while each organization asks the same general questions about finances, testimony, calling, parenting and lifestyle, the questions are worded just differently enough that you have to write your answers differently for each one. While we did copy and paste a lot, it was still a difficult task. But we got them done. We had to step out of our comfort zones and ask for even more references, often having to burden the same people again and again to fill out a reference form. Oh and it needs to be turned in like now. :/ But fortunately, we have some great friends and leaders who went above and beyond to help us out.
The next task was fundraising. The month of April we poured ourselves out completely asking anyone and everyone that we knew and even those that we didn't know if they would be willing to donate an item or service to an online auction that we were hosting. It was a TON of work, but in the end we ended up collecting over 100 items and we were able to raise about $3,500. We also sold T-shirts, which astonishingly brought in almost $900. We are overwhelmed at the generosity of friends and complete strangers!! During this time of fundraising, I think we pushed half of our Facebook followers away and I'm sure we were deleted several times. But that's ok. We also saw God provide in really big ways through people that we didn't even expect and we are so incredibly thankful!
When we started the process, we really didn't think that we would be able to fund raise money successfully. First of all, we lived overseas and so "traditional" fundraisers were obviously out of the question. And second of all, we have spent the last 3 years raising money for ministry and our circle of influence are already so incredibly generous to give to what we do. But we did fundraise and were pleasantly surprised with the success. We could not have done it without the help of our friends and family, mainly our brother and sister in law, who were themselves in the process of adopting. The biggest fee that we have had to date was certainly our agency fee of $6,000, which had to be paid before our agency would begin work on compiling our Dossier packet. This seemed almost insurmountable to us, but through our fundraising efforts, very generous donations, personal savings and an organization that awarded us a $1,000 grant, we will be able to turn that in within the next week! (During our fundraising, we also received our USCIS approval, which was so exciting!!)
The next financial hurdle is a fee of $3,100 that covers the document preparation, registration and authentication. This amount had to be turned in before our agency could actually send the paperwork to China. We had been hoping that this was an amount that they could bill to our family, as they had several fees in the past. But we found out that it in fact had to be paid before they could mail the papers. This is honestly disheartening for us. We have worked so hard for two solid months, and we are flat worn out on fund raising. We know that God is the only one that can make this happen, because He is the only one that has made any of it happen so far. And deep down we know we can trust in His timing, whatever that might be. But if we are honest, we are discouraged because we feel like this just meant more waiting. More time before we could be with our son and he could be with us. We want so badly to be able to send him a message and say Mommy and Daddy are coming! But from where we were standing, already more than a month behind our timeline goal, we just know that we have to surrender our desires to God's sovereignty. We have sent out one last plea to our friends and family, and put on our best face. We are choosing to keep the faith. We still have a couple of weeks. And we know from experience that a lot can happen in a couple of weeks!
We began this journey, as most families do, with a timeline in front of them and high hopes that ours would actually be smooth, unlike most other families that seem to hit huge bumps in the road. HA. First mistake. Actually, we knew that obstacles and hurdles were going to come up, and we have had our bumps. Our wiggle room is getting smaller and our next steps are feeling farther and farther away. We spent the majority of the month of March feverishly applying for grants. We applied for a total of 10 grants. To the unsuspecting eye, that may not seem like a big deal. It's just an application. In one sense, yes, that is true. But the truth is, these applications are almost just as involved, if not more on some levels, as the initial application to begin the adoption process. And while each organization asks the same general questions about finances, testimony, calling, parenting and lifestyle, the questions are worded just differently enough that you have to write your answers differently for each one. While we did copy and paste a lot, it was still a difficult task. But we got them done. We had to step out of our comfort zones and ask for even more references, often having to burden the same people again and again to fill out a reference form. Oh and it needs to be turned in like now. :/ But fortunately, we have some great friends and leaders who went above and beyond to help us out.
The next task was fundraising. The month of April we poured ourselves out completely asking anyone and everyone that we knew and even those that we didn't know if they would be willing to donate an item or service to an online auction that we were hosting. It was a TON of work, but in the end we ended up collecting over 100 items and we were able to raise about $3,500. We also sold T-shirts, which astonishingly brought in almost $900. We are overwhelmed at the generosity of friends and complete strangers!! During this time of fundraising, I think we pushed half of our Facebook followers away and I'm sure we were deleted several times. But that's ok. We also saw God provide in really big ways through people that we didn't even expect and we are so incredibly thankful!
When we started the process, we really didn't think that we would be able to fund raise money successfully. First of all, we lived overseas and so "traditional" fundraisers were obviously out of the question. And second of all, we have spent the last 3 years raising money for ministry and our circle of influence are already so incredibly generous to give to what we do. But we did fundraise and were pleasantly surprised with the success. We could not have done it without the help of our friends and family, mainly our brother and sister in law, who were themselves in the process of adopting. The biggest fee that we have had to date was certainly our agency fee of $6,000, which had to be paid before our agency would begin work on compiling our Dossier packet. This seemed almost insurmountable to us, but through our fundraising efforts, very generous donations, personal savings and an organization that awarded us a $1,000 grant, we will be able to turn that in within the next week! (During our fundraising, we also received our USCIS approval, which was so exciting!!)
The next financial hurdle is a fee of $3,100 that covers the document preparation, registration and authentication. This amount had to be turned in before our agency could actually send the paperwork to China. We had been hoping that this was an amount that they could bill to our family, as they had several fees in the past. But we found out that it in fact had to be paid before they could mail the papers. This is honestly disheartening for us. We have worked so hard for two solid months, and we are flat worn out on fund raising. We know that God is the only one that can make this happen, because He is the only one that has made any of it happen so far. And deep down we know we can trust in His timing, whatever that might be. But if we are honest, we are discouraged because we feel like this just meant more waiting. More time before we could be with our son and he could be with us. We want so badly to be able to send him a message and say Mommy and Daddy are coming! But from where we were standing, already more than a month behind our timeline goal, we just know that we have to surrender our desires to God's sovereignty. We have sent out one last plea to our friends and family, and put on our best face. We are choosing to keep the faith. We still have a couple of weeks. And we know from experience that a lot can happen in a couple of weeks!
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