Unconditional love

Another layer of understanding this process for me and him...he started crying as we were getting ready to go down to breakfast, crying uncontrollably. I had to bring him back up to the room. He rolled around on the floor, at times wanting to touch my hand or for me to hold him and then pushing me away, sometimes both at the same time.
But for heave's sake, I'm his 4th mommy! He doesn't know that he is stuck with me forever. That I will never leave him. We found out he had actually been in two foster homes.
I had a bit of my own grieving too. I can't fix this or take it away. I have to walk through it with him. Another picture of God. How we reject Him, turn away from Him, then cling to Him. Yet He is always there, always loves us no matter what. He understands! He had to abandon His own son, so that He could adopt me! Was it a huge sacrifice, was it hard, was it messy? ABSOLUTELY! But was He still in control, was He still right there? OF COURSE!
Please continue to pray for us!
Rod went to a museum with the group and we stayed here. It has been better with 2 bottles and lots of snacks, TV on.
This afternon during his nap I may go to the orphanage. Caleb only spent about 2 weeks there. But I still feel drawn to go, to better understand the plight of the orphan. And even if we come back here, I don't know if I will have another chance. It might do me in, but feel like I want to/need to do it.
Got to talk to our kids. Starting to miss them more. One more week til we go home.

1st 24 hours

Here is the picture of us meeting him.
We have ALL made it through the first 24 hours of having Caleb in our lives. I slept well last night but feel kind of tired. He slept well last night and easily went down for a nap this afternoon. I may join him... I'm still waiting for the "storm" to hit and trying to brace myself. But he is eating well, seems happy and is having fun playing with the toys we brought him.
This morning we had to go back to the adoption center and have a short interview and go over the paperwork I filled out last night. All this paperwork will then be notarized and will be our adoption certificate. So it was pretty much finalized today. Still hard to believe! I thought that he or some of the other kids would have a lot of trouble going back to the place we picked them up yesterday but there were 6 families there today and all the kids did great!
After we finished there we went to a grocery store. We got Caleb a couple of little books in Chinese and they have the english word for the item also, water and of course I had to get a couple of things from the bakery. I chose a couple of different bread to have with our "Ramen noodles" for lunch. The bread were good but very different from American breads or the breads I make. But I had some bread this morning that tasted like banana bread.
It has been raining here today. We may venture out for dinner tonight since we ate at the hotel restaurant last night. Things are pretty cheap here for us, but for them it is expensive. Inflation keeps getting higher and they have a 63% tax rate. I will never complain about ours again!
We are really enjoying getting to know and spending time with the other Bethany family that is here with us. They brought their 2 teenage sons and 3 1/2 year old chinese daughter with them. Their sons are great and have taken pictures for us and are great with all the little kids. Very nice family. They live in MI, I think in Grand Rapids.
Well I think I'm going to reat a little while I have the chance. I'm sure everything is going so well because of all your prayers! Thank you for your love and support!

Last day in Beijing

Today the sun was out, blue sky and windy. The wind blew a lot of the smog away. We went to the Forbidden City, Tiannemin Square and on a tour in the Hutong district where we rode on rickshaws. It was really neat. My favorite thing we have done. We actually got to go into a residents house and he talked to us and we got to ask him questions through a translator. His oldest son is a Kung Fu instructor in Houston.
The Forbidden City is HUGE. We walked and walked. It was pretty crowded. Many of the structures had hand paintings on them and many pieces were covered in gold. It was build in 1420. All the buildings put together there were 9,999 rooms, because 9 was considered the perfect number.
It is also amazing when we are on the bus and just looking at so many interesting things. Tall buildings EVERYWHERE, many of them apartment buildings. The driving here is kind of crazy, its every person for themselves whether you are driving, riding a bike or walking.
This evening we had Peking duck with another couple from our group. No one in the restaurant spoke English, but we figured it out and everything we got was good.
Going to bed early tonight and hopefully get some sleep as we may not get much the rest of the trip. We have to leave the hotel at 5:30 am to catch our flight to Wuhan. There is another Bethany family that got there today. We havn't met them yet as this is their 2nd adoption and they took the Shanghai instead of the Beijing one. We will get Caleb in the afternoon. I'm nervous, excited, scared...and I don't know what else! It still seems so surreal and just unbelieveable. Who am I and what am I doing here? Please pray for us tomorrow! I know God is faithful and He will continue to be with us on this journey. Doesn't mean it will be easy, we are just trying to obey Him...

Ni Hao from China

Woo-hoo I got on here! We started out pretty exhausted on wed. morning as our flight got canceled. So mom had to pick us up and take us back home as our flight would not leave for 5 hours. I tried to sleep a little but didn't really sleep. Then back to the airport to fly to San Francisco instead of Seattle. Then straight to Beijing. The flight was long, Rod slept way more than I did. I only slept probably 1-2 hours total. But I read a lot. Couldn't put down "Choosing to See". Awesome book!
We got to China, minus one piece of luggage. It wasn't anything major, but still wanted to get it if possible. It arrived this morning thank goodness!
Yesterday we ventured out to the local grocery store. We needed to buy bottled water as you can't drink the water here. The store was pretty neat. I tried to post a picture here but it didn't work. Maybe now it did...
Then last night we went to an acrobatic show. It was pretty neat. Then had some great Chinese food at our hotel.
This morning we were up early to go to the Cloisonne factory which are hand made and handpainted items made from copper and the Great Wall. The Great Wall was crowded but very impressive! I tried twice to get a picture on here, but it wouldn't work.
It has been very interesting and neat to be in our son's birth country, just been trying to take it all in...
Tomorrow we go to the Forbidden City, should be very interesting...
Monday afternoon we will get Caleb, its hard to believe its almost here!

Its been a long Winter...but Spring is HERE!

Its been a long winter in my heart and mind. With this journey of waiting in our adoption process, among many other things...My "long winter" started back in the end of October. We had been matched Sep. 20th and were anxiously awaiting our LOA (letter of approval) that would make it really official by China saying we could have Caleb. Our silent auction was coming up the first weekend of Nov. and I prayed and prayed for it to come by then. Surely God would answer yes to that prayer! But He did not. We were SO blessed by the generousity of our friends and family at our auction, surely we would get our LOA soon. The next "big" thing I had coming up was speaking at our church's women's lunch the week before Thanksgiving. I was speaking on our adoption journey, the waiting process, God's faithfulness. SURELY God would answer yes to receiving our LOA before then, so that I could stand up there and give Him all the glory. That is the way its supposed to work right?! It was just a couple of days before I was to speak, I was feeling really down. Why hadn't God answered? Why hadn't He come through the way He was "supposed" to? Also my mother-in-law had become very sick again and was in the hospital, she would not be there to hear me speak. I was disappointed.
As I prayed and cried out to God I realized He wanted me to speak about His faithfulness, even though He had not answered in the way I wanted Him to. He wanted me to give Him all the glory, even though it was hard and I didn't really feel like it. Our LOA was dated the Monday after I had spoken, but we didn't receive it until after Thanksgiving. It was certainly a test of my faith.
We quickly got our next set of paperwork done, for it only to sit for awhile, then it was the wrong paperwork, then the wrong amount of money, then had to wait a month longer for a separate approval. Dec. and Jan. felt REALLY long.
A few days before Christmas our world really changed. My mother-in-law went back into the hospital. Christmas Eve she went into ICU, never to really wake up again. She went home to be with Jesus on Jan. 4th. We couldn't believe she would not be here to see Caleb, whom she had been waiting to meet. Our lives and the lives of her grandchildren are not the same without her. Its still very hard.
Hopes of Feb. travel were dashed. Prayed for a miracle for March, but were still waiting on paperwork.
Finally on March 14th we got the call that our Article 5 had been issued on the 11th. Now to wait for travel approval. It could be another long couple of months. Kind of at the last minute my husband and I decided to go out of town one last time by ourselves as we had gift certificates that would expire the beginning of Dec. And we have no idea when we will be able to leave Caleb. So of course now we are so glad we went and had that opportunity.
Id didn't know how to pray. Of course I wanted to travel as soon as possible and I had been praying and had others pray that we would have Caleb by his birthday. But I wasn't sure how to pray for which son's birthday to miss, because our other son's birthday is at the end of April. I also very much wanted to travel with another family I had been in contact with, and they were still waiting on paperwork. I thanked God that He was the one to decide and not me. I prayed for strength to accept His will whatever it was.
Then the unbelievable happened as you can read in the previous post. My head is still spinning at the miracle! It is something only God could have done!
Each day I have had so much to do and I'm tired, which isn't a good way to start out this trip. I'm hoping to take things slower on Monday and Tuesday, we'll see.
I still can't believe its finally and actually happening!
In this journey of joy and sadness and waiting God has been there, even though at times I felt forgotten and He has been faithful in everything, each step of the way...
"Faithful" Chris Tomlin
Faithful, forever you are faithful, father to the fatherless.
You uphold the one who feels forsaken, you are faithful God.
Faithful, forever you are faithful, lover of the wounded heart
You defend the poor and the forgotten, you are faithful God.
And I will sing to the maker of heaven and earth
God, you reign forever and your love will endure
Faithful and true is the name of the Lord, you are faithful God.
Faithful, forever you are faithful,shelter for the fragile soul.
You lift us up, you hold us together, you are faithful God.
You are there, in every season of my soul
You are there, you're the anchor that will hold
You are there, in the valley of the shadows
You are faithful God.

We are going to China!

Havn't gotten to blog lately, as usual! So we got our travel approval on the 21st. Thought for sure we would find out the next morning if we would get to go in April or May. We were still in the mountains with no phone reception. I had not slept very well, so I got up and got ready and checked my e-mail, nothing...waited all day as we drove home to hear something. They hadn't heard back from the US consulate. So had to try and sleep another night, nothing the next morning either! It was driving me crazy~! Do I start getting ready or not?! Thursday morning came. I was very anxious. I stood by the phone and prayed at 8:20, then I got in the shower. A few minutes later, the kids start screaming outside the bathroom door saying that our social worker had called and had great news! I was shaking and crying and tried to quickly finish my shower. I thought for sure we would be going, but still tried to hold myself back a little in case there was a crushing blow. So I called her back and she said "Never say never for April!" I think I just kept saying "Oh my goodness!". So we were going to leave in 13 days. Now my head was spinning! We first called Rod and work, he was surprised and very excited. The kids took turns calling other family members. Then the craziness began. I didn't know where to start, everything became "urgent". So I made a list of things to do each day, to spread it out and break it up and make sense of the places I needed to go.
God performed a miracle! I will never take that for granted. I feel very humbled. There are others that should be going in this group too, but they still wait. Especially one family I was so looking forward to sharing this trip with. We had been matched the same day and had had similar delays over the past several months, we were each others daily cheerleaders. I'm still sad that I will probably not get to meet her this side of heaven...But as I have been learning in Isaiah God's ways and thoughts are so different than what we think should or shouldn't happen. I may never understand so many of the whys, but I know form the past, from His word, and many times in my life, that HE IS FAITHFUL!

TRAVEL APPROVAL!!!

The moment I have been waiting for! Its unbelievable!!! We got our Article 5 on the 11th. We were at the cabin the 11th-13th and found out about it on the 14th. I hadn't even posted about that. So Rod and I are out of town, in the mountains, no phone reception. I had told our SW we would be out of town because I was talking to her Friday about our travel visas. So we drove to another city this afternoon and I had phone reception and a message from our SW. I had even had my sister call and check our home phone messages this morning.
So they are trying to see if we can go with the group that is leaving April 5th or
6th. that is exciting and also freaks me out! It depends on if there are any US consulate appts. left. So we will find out first thing in the morning if we go in 2 weeks or 6 weeks, beginning of May. So please pray that I can sleep tonight!
I had actually been praying for this miracle. Be careful what you pray for! I even had a vivid dream about it last week. The reason I wanted to go the beginning of April is because I would be with both of my sons on each of their birthdays. Because i SO badly wanted Caleb home by his b-day on May 1st or at least be there. But then lately I felt like I couldn't pray about whose birthday I "wanted" to miss.
I also feel torn because there is a Bethany family in Michigan who I have been emailing. We got matched the same day and have followed a close paperwork journey the last several months. Including many of the same frustrating paperwork delays!
I'm so glad that God is in charge of all this and I don't have to decide!
So my head is spinning...
We talked to our kids and they are excitied. This has been such a great journey of faith for them also! We get back tomorrow evening.
Thank you for your prayers!