Got The Call!!

Many of you know our family has been in the very L O N G process of adopting a little girl from China. We were almost ready to pull out of the China program and pursue a local state adoption through another agency, even though deep down inside our heart was in China. We have spent countless hours praying for God's direction - 'cuz we're not getting any younger!! :) Tanya was particularly struggling with adopting an infant or toddler at her age and the ages of Austin and Kailey. We decided in May to change our application to a school-age child. It just seemed to make more sense with our stage in life. On Monday, June 16, 2008 we met with an adoption specialist from Christian Family Care Agency to start the ball rolling in the state direction. We left the door open for China, and just prayed for God's will. However, we feared the unknown of a child coming from the State Foster Care system and the trauma and abuse most these kids suffer. The next day we got the call about Qi Li. All looked good and we proceeded with the adoption. Then, on June 25th we got the most heart-breaking phone call. It turned out the CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs) made a horrible mistake. Qi Li was already being adopted by another family and someone in their office forgot to pull her off the available child website. It was one of the most difficult things we've had to go through. The CCAA was extremely apologetic and our agency began avocating on our behalf for the CCAA to somehow remedy the situation. After almost three weeks pass, we got another call! We were presented with Ying's referral! We were excited, yet in "cautious" mode. She was a "shared referral", which meant her picture and bio went out to multiple agencies. I finally got a hold of Tim at work and shared her info in a nutshell. It is required by our agency to seek medical advise from a doctor before we can "lock in" her referral. So, Tanya drove the medical report to our pediatrician. Then it was another agonizing five hours to wait for the doctor's call. Ying was healthy as a horse! Tanya immediately called our agency to lock in the referral. Tuesday, July 15th, we sent all the signed documents to Virginia and our agency sent our Electronic Acceptance (AE) along with our Letter of Intent (LOI) to China. Now, we wait a couple months to get our Referral Approval (RA) from China followed by our Travel Approval (TA). Once we have that, our agency makes all our appointments in China and our travel arrangements. We anticipate traveling sometime between October and December 2008!!