One step closer to Aryn

Ok, I was going to make you wait to see the picture of Aryn that God has blessed us with. However, I decided that I really want to share it with the world so that you can all oooohhh and ahhhh over her and see how she is growing. God is definitely with her. She looks so much bigger than she did in her referral picture, although I hear she is still a tiny little thing. Please keep her in prayer and ask God to prepare her heart to welcome us as her forever family. Please keep Isaac in prayer as he prepares to welcome a new sister and another person to share Mama's love and attention. We are so excited to welcome Aryn to our family and Isaac is very excited to become a brother, we just hope he is as excited about it when he realizes that Mama will have to hug and kiss on his little sister as well as sharing hugs and kisses with him. I have a couple more pictures, but you'll have to stop back in a few days because I want to spread them out in the blog so that I can savor them.

Last Friday I called our agency to ask about timing. We have been hoping and praying that we will be able to travel to meet Aryn by the holidays (Thanksgiving or Christmas). Thanksgiving never fit into their window of four-nine months from when we sent our letter of intent to adopt her, but Christmas fits at the very beginning of that window. We had been waiting on our LOA and were on day 37, when we adopted Isaac we had waited about 30 days for LOA.

So I called to ask her what the trend tended to be for families like us, who were recently logged into the system to adopt their child. I was told 2-3 months (60-90 days). She said that we would most likely travel in January or February to which I told her, "I can't travel in January! I have 9 days of leave and I need to travel in December." She probably thought I was a nut or a drama queen, who knows. Anyways, I told her that I needed a miracle because otherwise it was going to be tough. She said, "Well, it is possible if you get your LOA sometime next week." Ok for about 30 seconds after I got off of the phone I was dejected, I felt as if she had told me there was no way I could meet my daughter this year. Then I realized she just gave me the opportunity to put my trust in Jehovah Jirah rather than on man. So that is what we did. On Tuesday night we had Open House where parents get to meet their child's teacher. I told parents that my family is adopting a little girl and we are waiting on approval before we can go to China to finalize the adoption. I also told them that if they are a praying people that we would appreciate their prayers, because without them it would be impossible to travel to meet our daughter before Christmas which would mean I would be out of the classroom longer than I had planned. I'm pretty confident that got some parents on their knees because we don't like our child's teacher to be out of the classroom. I honestly have no idea how many people have joined with us in prayer as we wait to bring Aryn home, but we are so thankful for everyone who petitioned the Lord on our behalf this week because the same lady who pretty much told me it would be impossible to travel by the end of the year had to call yesterday to tell me that we haveHow about that!!?? So if you prayed with us, thank you!! We are so thankful!! We still have several steps to go before we get travel approval to go and meet our sweet girl, but we are one step closer!!! Step 1 Tuesday we should receive our copy of the LOA which we will sign and mail off with a stack of documents to USCIS where they will give us a paper that declares Aryn to be an immediate relative. Step 2 Once we receive our provisional approval declaring her an immediate relative we have to contact the National Visa Center for another letter, I'm not sure what it does for us, only that we need it. Step 3 We can send a scan of our USCIS approval and NVC letter to our agency and they will get them to the China office where the papers will be filed with the US Consulate (I think I have this right) and they will issue Article 5 which is the final paper that China needs to grant us travel approval. Step 4 China will issue Travel Approval and we can begin to plan our trip to meet Aryn. (This was the only step after LOA when we adopted Isaac, a lot has changed in the past 2 years...).

So from what I understand we will be able to travel within the next TWO to THREE months! That's right! So now our new prayer request is that we are at the beginning of that two to three month window. The beginning has us leaving for China at the beginning of December, but we could be home to celebrate Christmas with Daddy!!! My mom is definitely traveling with us and Craig's sister may travel with us, that is still to be decided. Craig wants to save the days that he has accumulated to bond with Aryn at home. After prayer, discussion, and more prayer, I feel good about him staying behind but we'll need prayers for that as well, because he'll be half-a-world away while this crazy life change is going on.

Now to Him who is able to do immeasurable more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen! (Ephesians 3:20-21 NIV)