Our China Itinerary

We have our official plans.

We will leave Orlando heading for Los Angeles on Friday, October 10th at 1:55 pm. We will arrive in Guangzhou, China on Sunday, October 12th at 6:20 am which is Saturday, October 11th at 6:20 pm here in Orlando. Many thanks to our friend Lily who will babysit our house and take care of our dog while we travel to meet Isaac!

This is a photo of the inside of a China Southern Boeing 777-200. I hope that it's bigger than it looks in the picture.

Orlando time Saturday 10/11 (CHINA time - Sunday 10/12) arrive in Guangzhou and check into hotel. We'll probably sleep a lot. :o)

Orlando time - Sunday 10/12 around 10:30 pm (CHINA time - Monday 10/13 around 10:30 am) - We will meet Isaac.

Orlando time - Sunday 10/19 (CHINA time - Monday 10/20) - No later than today, we will finish our adoption paperwork and receive Isaac's Chinese passport. Today Isaac will have a medical exam and get his visa photo for his US visa so that he can travel to the US with his new mama & baba.

Orlando time - Monday 10/20 around 10:30 pm (CHINA time -Tuesday 10/21 around 10:30 am) We have our Consulate appointment.

Orlando time - Wednesday 10/22 by 4:00 am (CHINA time -Wednesday 10/22 by 4:00 pm) - We will receive Isaac's U. S. visa and attend his Swearing-in-Ceremony.

Orlando time - Wednesday 10/22 9:00 am (CHINA time -Wednesday 10/22 9:00 pm) We will depart from Guangzhou, Guangdong.

Orlando time - Thursday 10/23 9:16 am - We will arrive in Orlando, Florida!!!!

Prayer Requests

Prayer is the most important way that you can support us in the coming days, weeks, and months. We are very fortunate to be surrounded by loving and supportive people in our family.

Please understand that we don't really know how well Isaac will take to our family and adjust to life outside of the orphanage, however we do look forward to the time when we can introduce our new arrival to you. Thank you for your part in this special moment in our lives.

Prayer Requests

· Pray that we will be free from stress and frustration as we schedule flights and make the final preparations to bring Isaac into our lives.
· Pray for safe travels of Craig, his sister Lynne, and I as we travel to Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, in China, and our return home.
· Pray that Isaac will be able to bond with us and accept us as his parents.
· Pray that we will be able to find a great cleft team to perform Isaac’s surgery.
· Pray that Isaac’s birth parents will know that he is being adopted into a loving family and that he is receiving the care he needs to live a happy and healthy life.
· Pray for our interviews with Chinese officials once in China
· Pray that the adoption goes smoothly and without complication
· Pray that God will bless our finances
· Pray that things will go well with my students at school as I feel very anxious leaving them to go on maternity leave.

Sending Love to China

We were able to send a care package to Isaac in China. We were thrilled to hear about redthreadchina.com where Ann will put together a care package and contact the orphanage on our behalf.

We were able to send candies for the director and the nannies, a camera so that they can take pictures of Isaac, along with 4 pictures that we hope will help prepare Isaac to join our family. We sent a picture of his new mama & baba. A picture of his baba with his Aunt Lynne. A picture of his mama with his Aunt Wendy, who will be his babysitter once mama returns to work, and a picture of his gou (dog). We also sent him a toy truck. In addition to the items in our care package Ann translated a letter to the director of the orphanage. We were able to ask questions that we hope will help make Isaac's transition into our family go more smoothly.

TA!!!!!!

WOW!!! We received our Travel Approval (TA) just 14 days after we received our LOA (Letter of Acceptance). We were shocked because we were not even looking or hoping for TA yet because NOTHING and I mean nothing has gone ahead of schedule for our entire adoption. Well that is nothing until we received our TA yesterday. Patricia, the travel coordinator for our agency, called while I was checking out at Target. I looked at the number on my cell phone and was like, who is calling me from this area code?!

Patricia said, "I've got good news for you!" I was so shocked. I didn't want to make the cashier think I'd lost my mind so I kept myself under control as I walked over to a bench to discuss possible appointment dates with Patricia. She asked me if I had a calendar so that I could discuss dates with her. I opened my calendar to November because I thought there was no way we would be able to travel in October because someone on another list had said the Consulate was booked through October. When she asked how the 21st sounded I said, "Wow, we should be able to make it home in time for Thanksgiving." That's when she told me that she was asking about October 21st and I was stunned!

So after telling Craig the wonderful news and calling Patricia back to tell her that we would be THRILLED beyond belief to have an appointment date of the 21st, our agency is submitting a request for the Consulate Appointment on October 21st, 22nd, or 23rd. They have to give the Consulate 3 different days to work with and then they'll give us the date we can come. We are hoping that we will be able to get the CA appointment on the 21st because it would allow us to leave to come home the night of the 22nd.

So if that all comes together like we hope, we could meet Isaac on October 13th! I believe that would have us traveling to China on October 9th or so. Oh my goodness that's less than 3 weeks!!!!!!! How will we ever be ready!!!!????

Long Awaited Update

Ok. I Know it has been well over a year since my last update. To be honest at times I let things discourage me and it wasn't uplifting to write about Love's Journey. A lot has happened and while we thought we were starting a journey to adopt Hannah, we are actually adopting Isaac.

The strange thing is that when we chose to adopt from China I really struggled because I felt as if I was choosing to have a daughter. When you give birth to a biological child you can't select boy or girl and I thought by choosing China, we were selecting to have a daughter. Oh the plans of mice and men...

After we submitted our dossier to China we learned more about the waiting child program. At first we thought if you chose to be part of the waiting child program you were presented with a child whose needs you may or may not be able to treat and support. Later we learned that there are many children and you are able to research needs that your family can support and that there are many children whose needs really aren't that special after all. Sadly our paperwork had gone to China as waiting for a non-special-needs child and we were unable to be matched with a child from our agencies waiting child list because our paperwork had been in China for too long after we learned about how the waiting child program worked.

Sometime this past spring China implemented a new type of waiting child program. In this program several different agencies would share a list of children whom they could work to find families for. When matching children with families on this list agencies were able to consider families who were already DTC (documents to China) and LID (logged into China). Since our paperwork had already passed through the review room we were able to find a match very quickly!

Before we decided to look into this new program we spent a lot of time in prayer, researched numerous special needs, spent more time in prayer, read books, prayed, and finally felt peace about submitting a checklist of special needs we felt able to work with as a family. Another God thing that lead us to pursue the special needs list was when Craig ran into his friend Eric. Eric is a doctor who said that he would be happy to look over any files for us.

We sent our checklist to our adoption agency on Thursday, July 24th. On Friday I called to check to make sure they had received the information that they needed so that we could move forward with the special needs program. Erin told me that there was a little boy with cleft palate that she wanted to tell us about, but that the online system was down.

On Wednesday, July 30th she called to tell me about a little boy. I believe this is the same boy she mentioned to me on the 25th, but I am not 100% sure. Erin told me about Zhao Yao Dong and I was excited about what I heard so I told her to lock the file and send his information to us. Once Erin locked the file we had 48 hours to look over his medical information, submit a treatment plan, and make a decision about whether or not to add this little guy to our family.

Our agency tried to submit our Letter of Intent (LOI) on Friday, August 1st, but the website was down and they were not able to submit it for us. It was 10:00 am EST, but in China it was 10:00 pm on Friday night and nobody was there. Our agency submitted everything via fax and sent a letter explaining why they were unable to submit it online. We spent all weekend in prayer and miraculously on Monday, August 4th our his file was still locked and Erin was able to submit our LOI online. We were on our way to adopt Zhao Yao Dong. We will name him Isaac Yao Li Stopyra.

The map of China above shows Guangdong Province which is where Isaac currently lives. Dongguan City is about 30 miles north of Hong Kong. I know I've written a lot. I know you have questions. I'll try to post more later.

:o) Gretchen