TRAVEL APPROVAL!!!!

BIG news today!

We have received Travel Approval!!!

This is the LAST piece of paperwork we need from China in order to GO GET OUR BABY!

Now, don't stop the prayers! The swine flue is still causing some adoption problems....

We are waiting to get our Consulate appointment(CA) and get the OK to enter the Fujian province. Over the last few weeks some provinces have refused to allow Americans to enter. So pray, pray, pray that the flue will fizzle away and our appointments will go through next week.

Once we have our CA, then we book our fights! We have been collecting American Express points since we first got married (13 yrs) We are hoping to have enough points to purchase our airline tickets. So while your praying for the CA, would you mind praying for our airline tickets?

So if all goes well..........WE ARE LEAVING JUNE 25th!

And Elizabeth Day will be JUNE 29th!

I also want to write about the miracle of adoption. If you have ever witnessed an adoption, or really any "birth" of any child into a family....its a miracle. I wrote about this some on our first website when my sister was waiting for Corinne. Here is my entry from January 2007 (the beginning of our paperchase):

I have been fortunate to experience my body birth a baby 3 times. I have watched my sister give birth twice. Participating in the birth of a baby is a highly spiritual experience for me. God has given women a special place in that we feel & physically participate in His creation. Both my sister and I had "natural" childbirths, meaning no medications. So I feel I have seen/felt labor in a very pure form. What I remember about childbirth is first, pain. Yes it is painful. But there is this amazing gift on the other side of the pain. Labor is hard work. It requires dedication, resiliancy, endurance, patience, encouragement from others, faith, stamina, hope, and most of all love. I was so honored and blessed that my sister asked me to join her as I watched my 2 nephews be born. She had her husband as her "coach" and I was another person to support her through labor. I watched a beautiful love between my sister and her husband. I watched them depend on each other and their Lord. Every once and while I got to offer a word of encouragement or hold her hand. I was a very small part of the entire labor but it meant the world to me and I think I did help my sister. It was the most intimate experience I've ever had with someone besides my husband. I have been in the "labor" room with my sister for almost a year now as she waits for her daughter from China. And again, I am blessed. I have watched her "blossom" but it is her heart not her belly that has grown. I have found her adoption pregnancy just as exciting and facinating as her physical pregnancy. I've seen her nesting in the early days, working quickly and systematically gathering papers & documents. I've seen her "glow" with excitement with the LID and Referral. I've seen her "joints swell" from standing too long for the TA. And I've seen her grow weary with being "post due", experiencing early labor but not quite in the hospital (or on the airplane) just yet. My sister is about to be on the other side of the labor pains. She is about to receive a precious gift, her daughter. I am just beginning my "pregnancy". I hope I grow as beautifully as she has. My sister knows her child's face & name which I think must be like feeling a baby move in your womb. I'm so early in our adoption pregnancy that I can't feel those "movements" yet but I know its coming. I am amazed how God created our bodies to know how to grow and birth a baby. And now God has shown me this beautiful world of adoption. How a child is conceived in our hearts & minds. And how we "carry" that child through the paperchasing and waiting. And finally we labor with pain, hope, and love. Its the delivery that is the miracle. God delivers that sweet baby into our arms. Perhaps we are delivered as well.....

I'm just overwhelmed since we received Elizabeth's referral. This journey is soooo precious. I'm reminded that the God created gestation of pregnancy is significant and life giving just like the gestation/waiting I have experienced with Elizabeth. Here I am in the last weeks....the final trimester. My hormones are raging. The tears are so close and flow easily. I can't clean enough! I'm reading 2 books at once about parenting her. I dream about her, day and night. I forget things (like my birthdate on my Visa application!). I love my husband more deeply. I want to hold my kids closer. The aching heart & arms are almost unbearable at times. 

Thank you God for preparing my heart and spirit to be Elizabeth's mother. I pray that you prepare her heart to meet her family. We love her so much, thank you that You love her more.