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An exciting day along our journey

Today marks a special day in our journey to adopt Faith. It is our "DTC" (date to China - not for travel, just dossier). We have been on this 40 day prayer journey, asking the Lord to bring her to us sooner than the guesstimated 3 year wait... it's a thrill for us to see some more forward momentum in the process. This is certainly a journey patience. We continue to pray and know full well that if God so chooses, He'll allow us to be connected with her sooner. We also still have a tremendous peace about it taking 3 years... He's got us in a very good place. Just wanted to briefly share this additional step with you all. The next thing we'll hear is our official "LID" (log in date) once China has reviewed our dossier. This date will likely be in about a week or two, but from what we understand, we won't be informed of our LID for a month or two. Once this date is set, the real wait begins.... we are over-joyed a blessed the Lord has called us to this.

40 day Mountain Moving Prayers

It's so cool how the Lord works... I especially love when He talks directly to a pastor through his own sermon prep. Chad preached this week from the book of Matthew, chapter 21:18-27. In doing so, God impressed upon his heart that we need to heed the words in Matt. 21:21-22 "And Jesus answered and said to them, 'Truly I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, 'be taken up and cast into the sea, it will happen. And all things asked in prayer, believing, you will receive". So, we have decided to begin a 40 day prayer journey asking the Lord to remove the giant mountain of our 3 year wait to adopt Faith. We are at total peace if it takes 3 years, but feel the need to request this of the Lord and see what He does. We know that all things will happen in His perfect timing, and He does tell us to ask, so we will.... with absolute faith that His will is going to be done. Can't wait to report what He's done after these 40 days of prayer. What a fun challenge for all of us.... instead of the "love dare", it's the "Prayer Dare" (hahaha). We hope many of you take on this prayer journey as well... ask God to remove some giant mountains in your life. We'd love to hear from you all how He's working in your lives. :-)

FedEx has our "package"

YAY! After 10 months in the making, FedEx is currently traveling with our "package" (Dossier) to Bethany's corporate office in MI. There it will be translated to Chinese and then sent to China! A perfect ending to our year of preperation. We are blessed by many answered prayers and rejoice that the Lord has opened doors to allow this to happen. There have been many joyful tears over this past month as each hurdle was jumped over with ease! Our hearts have been overwhelmed by joy and gratitude again and again, as we wrote very large checks to accomplish this. Thank you again to so many generous friends and family that have joined us in prayer and financial support. There is no way we could ever thank you all enough! Please know that with each dollar spent, we were ever mindful of all of you!!!!! We will update again when China has our dossier... translation process takes about a month. Please pray all continues to go smoothly and that we'll have a "log-in" date real soon. Once we have that date, our wait begins. We are also praying that God sees fit to bring her to us sooner than the guesstimated 3 year wait. However, we want His will to be done and if it takes that long, we are at total peace with that. Happy New Year everyone!

IMMIGRATION APPROVAL.... CHECK!!!!!!!!

WOOOO HOOOOO.... we just received our I-800 Immigration approval today. Our social worker is reviewing dossier currently. If all goes well, we hope to have it state sealed and authenticated on Monday. From that point, we make 4 copies and send it off to MI (Bethany's corp. office). That will be the final step for us!!!! So, PRAISE THE LORD, we are indeed getting our dossier turned in this month!!!!!!! We'll keep you posted, and believe us, you'll know when that official documentation leaves our hands! We are over-joyed. What a perfect Christmas gift from the Lord to have received immigration approval this week... that was our missing link and the one remaining peice to the puzzle that we had no control over. It is awesome to see how God brought it all to pass! :-)

Immigration Phase

YAY! Home study was officially completed and notarized a couple of weeks ago! It has been sent to Immigration along with our I-800 immigration application. We are so relieved to have the ball rolling again. We should be contacted soon to go in for another series of fingerprints. We'll likely be held up in Immigration for a couple of months and then we can send our Dossier to China... can't wait for that day!!! So, in the meantime, we'll be busy with another massive task of completing our Dossier, which involves tons of paperwork and notarization. A trip to Sac. to have everything authenticated will also be on our to do list. Alongside this paperwork, we'll be busy applying for adoption grants. What a blessing that so many granting organization are out there to help families like ours, who have a heart to adopt and yet are overwhelmed by the daunting $30,000.00 to do so. We are so grateful to be about a third of the way there financially and we look forward to seeing God's hand in continued provision for the remaining $20,000.00ish we need to come up with. We would greatly appreciate your prayers as we apply for these grants and we look forward to seeing the Lord's perfect provision! Thank you for your interest in our journey to adopt Faith. Much love to you all!

NAME CHANGE JUST ABOUT RESOLVED.... IMMIGRATION HERE WE COME!!!

Praise the Lord, our name change issue is just about resolved. Chad's name change has been taken care of and we cancelled Rica's, since we found a way around that! A simple ammendment to our marriage license will do the job.... who knew?!?! Apparently not many... haha. It went something like 3 or 4 attorneys, numerous social workers, a large amount of government officials and 1 judge. It was one wonderful attorney in Fresno named Julie that solved this mystery! Thank you Julie!!! Anyway, we are very grateful to be just about past this hurdle... (and we thought finances would be our biggest mountain... haha). We are dreaming again about our sweet baby Faith and we are so happy to be moving forward! If you'd like to pray for a miracle.... we'd love to have our Dossier into China by the end of this year, please join us in prayer! Love you all!