Sunday morning

Last Sunday after church I thought about how much I would miss church while we are gone.  We really love our church and never fail to walk away feeling revived spiritually and emotionally.  We are new members, yet the people there have welcomed us with loving arms and given us incredible support throughout this adoption.  This is not our first adoption, but it is the first time we have received so much support throughout the process.  Six months ago we were strangers to the people at our church, but now we are family.  This morning we especially miss our church family!  I found it so amazing that when I was giving Malachi a shower this morning he asked me, "Do they have church in China?"  We had not told him it was church day, but his spirit must have felt the same void mine feels this morning knowing we will miss going to church and having fellowship with our great friends.  It does make it feel better to know Christina will be able to go to church and that she is staying with a wonderful family from our church so we still have that connection to our church family.

We are now headed to breakfast and will go touring Beijing after that.  Spokoynoy nochi to our Siberian princess!

We are in Beijing!

We made it safely to Beijing and we are now in our hotel room. It is 3:00am Sunday morning so we are going to bed. We greatly appreciate all the prayers as we had a VERY smooth trip. There were no delays anywhere along the way. I had no motion sickness, which is practically a miracle (when we flew to India 2 years ago to get Malachi I got extremely sick, sick enough to go through more than a few air sickness bags). The flight from Seattle to Beijing was half-empty (at least) so we ended up with plenty of room to spread out and be more comfortable. Caleb is not better but he has not gotten worse so that is very good. He slept during more than half of the ~5 hours we were on the plane to Seattle, and both boys got a lot of sleep on the flight to Beijing. Now it is time for us parents to hopefully get a few hours of sleep! Love to all, especially our dear Christina!

On our way!

Our first 2 flights are done and we are now in Seattle awaiting our flight to Beijing.  Caleb is really sick but hanging in there.  Please pray he starts getting better and not worse.  Christina says she is sick too, but she is thankfully in wonderful hands so we aren't worried.

I know a lot of people are interested in our itinerary, so here it is.

Friday morning - departure from hometown airport, fly to Atlanta, fly to Seattle, fly to Beijing

Saturday night / early Sunday morning arrival in Beijing

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday (August 29-31) - tour Beijing, meet with agency staff

Wednesday (September 1) - fly to Guiyang in Guizhou province

Thursday, Friday, Saturday (September 2 - 4) - tour Guizhou province

Sunday (September 5) - MICAELYN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Monday (September 6) - officially become parents to our precious little girl!

Tuesday (September 7) - file for Micaelyn's passport

Wednesday (September 8) - fly to Guangzhou, meet JOSHUA and officially adopt him (we will meet him and complete the adoption on the same day in order to get the adoption registered before his birthday)

Sunday (September 12) - Joshua's 14th birthday, his first birthday to celebrate as a beloved son!

Tuesday (September 14) - Consulate appointment

Thursday (September 16) - pick up visa, free to leave Guangzhou, take overnight train to Guilin

Friday (September 17) - Li River cruise in Guilin

Saturday (September 18) - tour Guilin, take overnight train to border of China/Hong Kong

Sunday (September 19) - explore Hong Kong

Monday (September 20) - fly from Hong Kong to Detroit

Tuesday (September 21) - fly HOME!!!!!

Our total time gone will be 3 1/2 weeks.  Since most adoption require you to spend a week in your child's province before going on to Guangzhou we thought we would have to be in Micaelyn's province for nearly a week, and since adoptions from Guangzhou take 2 weeks we thought we would have to spend 2 weeks there making the total trip 3 weeks plus the time in Beijing (most adoption agencies have you start out in Beijing).  Thus when we started planning our trip around Joshua's birthday before we even had travel approval we based it on this timeline of being gone for 3 1/2 weeks.  As it turned out the officials in both places decided to move us through a little faster so we could have done the trip in 2 1/2 weeks, but since we had already planned the dates we would arrive in and depart from China we kept it at that.  Thus even though we will leave Guiyang within just a few days of getting Micaelyn we will still stay there a week getting to know the area she is from.  There is a story about why this is important to us, but it will have to wait until after we return home.  However, it does make a really good "Red Thread" story!

Supposedly we should be able to leave by Friday, September 17, but our agency told us to stay in China a few more days in case things don't get rushed through as they are supposed to.  Since we will be tired of staying in Guangzhou by that point we figured the overnight trains would be a good way to see another part of China without spending a lot of extra money (and since the trains are overnight that means 2 nights less of having to pay for 2 hotel rooms).

I am very excited about going to China, even more excited about getting my children, but I'm already eager to get home.  I can't wait to get home and get my house cleaned up, do the laundry (because I know I will have A LOT), and get settled into home life with ALL my children under 1 roof.

Leaving tomorrow!

Just a short break from the madness of packing to say we leave tomorrow morning!  Hopefully I will get to blog during our layovers and can post our itinerary.  Please pray there are no delays, especially on our first flight as our layover in Atlanta is pretty short.  Also, please pray for good health.  We've all been feeling less than 100% (probably due to stress), but Caleb in particular seems to be taking a turn downhill.  He has been fairly congested today, coughing, runny nose, etc.

By the way, we hopefully will be able to blog via a VPN while in China (blogspot is blocked in China and can't be accessed there), but if that fails for some reason we will blog via our babyjellybeans account.  The link is posted on the right hand side (underneath all the kids' pictures) as "our original family website." 

New pictures of Joshua

For whatever reason we haven't been able to get many pictures of Joshua, not even when we sent the care package through Ann at Red Thread. We did finally get one last week, and another family that recently traveled received a picture of him with his friends who are also being adopted through the Journey of Hope program. I can't help but notice Joshua is wearing the same clothes in both pictures, but the pictures were not taken on the same day. Also, his friend (the boy on the right side of the group photo) is wearing the same shorts and sandals as him. This was something we noticed with some of the pictures of Christina and her friends when she lived in the orphanage. It seems the orphanages often end up with many of the same clothes, and the kids just have to wear whatever is available. Can you imagine how much harder this makes things for the orphans who go to school with kids who have families? It will be so nice to finally give Joshua plenty of nice clothes to wear.

New pictures of Micaelyn

After asking numerous times over the last year for current pictures I finally have some! We received the last pictures of Micaelyn from the orphanage back in February, but they were actually taken last September, nearly a year ago. Needless to say I'm not only happy to have gotten more pictures, I'm also happy the pictures were actually current this time. We were so very happy to see her smiling in these pictures!

I just love the last picture of her with her mouth closed. Due to her enlarged tongue her mouth has been open in almost all the pictures we have received of her. It's nice to get a glimpse of how cute and spunky she looks when she holds her lips together.  Needless to say, I cropped it to show off her sweet little face!

Also on a positive note, the geneticist has agreed to work Micaelyn in soon after we get her home even though it normally takes several months to get an appointment. Due to the fact she should be receiving blood work every 6 weeks and ultrasounds every 12 weeks to screen for tumors it is of utmost importance she be seen right away. She hasn't been receiving any screening in China, so we have had to rely solely on faith that her little body is staying healthy and tumor free. It was also wonderful to hear the geneticist has had experience with Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome patients. Given it's a rather rare syndrome many families deal with doctors who have no experience with BWS. We feel fortunate to have access to such good medical care for Micaelyn.

Language troubles...

Christina has been home 4 1/2 years. She now knows a lot of English, but she still occasionally asks what a word means and uses a dictionary much more often than most 17 year olds (and we're proud of her for using the dictionary!). So the other night when she was given an assignment in her Bible class to read in Genesis about Abraham it was not surprising she came across a word she didn't know. Unfortunately, instead of asking me or looking it up in the dictionary she showed up in her Bible class the next day asking everyone (very seriously), "What does circumcision mean?" She said she didn't understand why everyone was laughing so hard. Oh, the joys of learning a new language as a teenager!

Since I didn't have the blog back when we brought Christina home, here are a few pictures of her from her first months home with us. It's hard to believe she grew so much so quickly, but she is still just as beautiful as ever!

Micaelyn and Joshua, Here we come!!!

After looking at my precious daughter's picture for over a year now KNOWING she was my daughter (and for many months before I knew she was my daughter I had been looking at her sweet picture on a couple of photolistings praying for her to find a family) I can finally say we leave NEXT WEEK to bring her home. It seems almost surreal after waiting so long, but in the miracle God has woven for us we will not only be bringing home our little girl we will also be bringing home a 14 year old son! Micaelyn and Joshua, we'll be there soon to bring you HOME!

All the Difference

Like cold water to a weary soul is good news from a distant land. -Proverbs 25:25
We recently received a letter from Joshua. Here it is:

Dear mom and dad,
How are you?
I am glad that you choose me to your family member. Thank you for your gifts that you sent to me. I share and play with them with my close friends.
My best friend is Guang Huang Zheng. He is very kind to me. When I have trouble in doing my homework, he will not tell me the right answer directly, instead he will teach me the ways to analyzing the problem. What’s more, he tells me, “You should not only look for the answers when you suffer trouble in studies, but also look for the way to solve such kinds of problem. Doing this, you won’t be wrong again.” So I share with him first since I have something good to eat and play with now, and then I share with other friends. Finally can you send me some shampoo?
Hope you all to be healthy and happy everyday. I will be waiting for you to come to meet me. I love you very much.
Hai Hua
Jul.30th, 2010

Getting the care package we sent to him caused a bit of a mess, but at least in the end he did receive the things we sent him. We sent him a few small toys, clothes, 20 candy bars (so he could share), toothbrush/toothpaste, a backpack, some pens, a journal, and some pictures.

It was extremely hard for me to read Joshua's request for shampoo. Here is a teenage boy who has for the first time in his life parents to ask for things from, and the one thing he asks for is shampoo. It didn't really shock me, after all I have heard all the stories about how terrible Christina's life was at her orphanage in Siberia and the things she didn't have there. However, even when it's not surprising, it's still agonizing to read that your own son doesn't have even the most basic necessities of life. I think often of the kids at Christina's orphanage in Siberia that begged us to find families for them too. Sadly, most of those kids will never find families, and many will die before they are even 20 years old. Very, very few will ever live a "decent" life (and I put decent in quotes because the few that reach this level of success will still live a life that's far below the poverty level here in America, and they will still face many hardships and prejudices for having grown up as an orphan). Very few people understand why we have willingly chosen such a difficult path. Some of our own family completely disapprove of it. However, when shampoo is the most important thing a child can ask for, when children around the world beg for a family, when small children live by themselves on the street, you can do only 2 things about it - you can choose to forget it and continue living your life as if in complete ignorance of the desperate needs of so many children around the world or you can choose to do something to make a difference. One choice leads to the easy path, one choice leads to the more difficult path. We have chosen to do something about it, and while it may be the more difficult path it is also the more rewarding path, and more significantly it is the path we are called by Christ to take.

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." -Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" poem

The Starfish Story
Original Story by: Loren Eisley

One day a man was walking along the beach when he noticed
a boy picking something up and gently throwing it into the ocean.
Approaching the boy, he asked, “What are you doing?”
The youth replied, “Throwing starfish back into the ocean.
The surf is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them back, they’ll die.”
“Son,” the man said, “don’t you realize there are miles and miles of beach and hundreds of starfish?
You can’t make a difference!”
After listening politely, the boy bent down, picked up another starfish,
and threw it back into the surf. Then, smiling at the man, he said…”
I made a difference for that one.”