Article 5 Approval

I know, I know, long time no blog.

Well, I'm here to update on all things John. Last Thursday, September 30, we received our Article 5 letter. I really don't know a whole lot about what an Article 5 letter, but I do know this. You have to have it to adopt. It takes about 8 weeks after you get the Article 5 to receive the High Court Order. Once we get the HCO we will be given travel dates which are usually 1-3 weeks post HCO.

I've been scouring the internet looking for blogs from people who have adopted or are in the process of adopting from Hong Kong. So I'm going to add a little technical info here for others who may be reading this blog to get some answers.

We received our Matching Approval on August 10. It took about a week for the documents from HK to arrive at our adoption agency. In the mean time David and I filled out documents for immigration. Everything was mailed to USCIS on either 8/20 or 8/21. We received immigration approval on 9/5 which was about 2 & 1/2 weeks.

After than all of our immigration info was supposed to be sent to the US Consulate in  Hong Kong for the Article 5 letter . A friend of mine who is a few weeks ahead of me in the journey told me that it took them 10 days after immigration approval to get their Article 5 letter. That was not the case for us.

Ten days came and went without hearing anything from the consulate. After much fretting and gnashing of teeth I called Bethany. Long story short, our paper work got left on a bureaucrat's desk and was not sent to the consulate. Craziness ensued on my part which involved me calling the consulate on a Sunday night to try and figure out if they had received our documents. Ok, I have to tell you, those poor English speaking Hong Kong ladies had no clue what this South Ga redneck was saying. I kept yelling "article 5" into the computer (I called on Skype). Travel over there is going to be real interesting for us.

Thank the good Lord, Mother's Choice confirmed with us that Monday that the consulate had received our immigration and was in the process of getting the Article 5 together. The actual Article 5 was issued September 27. Hallelujah!!!

Now we are waiting for the High Court Order. They say it take 6-10 weeks with 8 being the average. Please pray with me for the HCO. All of this has been perfectly ordained by God. I know His timing is best. I want to be comfortable and peaceful with God's timing. But, I really want that HCO to come sooner rather than later. God hasn't been doing any of this according to my time table, so maybe I should start going with His. The only problem with that is that I can't print off His table study it, and make plans accordingly :0)

I got a video in the mail last week. I can't wait to tell you all about it!

Almost there!!!

Almost a week ago today, we found out that Hong Kong had approved David and me to be the parents of our 3 year old boy (we knew he was ours even when they didn't). Woo Hoo! It only took 3 months & 27 days to make that decision, but who's counting? We are so excited! It almost seems unreal that we are getting closer to traveling.

So that is the next question. When do we travel? From what I understood them to say, here is the break down:
2-3 weeks for I-800 approval
2 weeks for Article V approval
8-10 weeks for the High Court Order

So that is roughly 4 months, which puts us into December. I also found out that we will only get about a 1-3 week lead time for airplane travel and hotel. I'm already worried that the airline tickets will be astronomical because of both the time of year and the fact that we can't buy the tickets earlier. I'm praying about that. I called Clark Howard's consumer action number to ask the best way to handle this. They said the best way was to sign up on various websites to track ticket prices.

Another reason I'm concerned about ticket prices is because we had originally planned to take Calvin and Holley Kate with us. If the tickets are real expensive then that will not happen. Of course, that make me sad    :(

But you know, whatever happens is what was supposed to happen. God may not make a way for Calvin and Holley Kate to go with us. He may have other plans that my human self has no way of grasping. And if that is the way it shakes out, I'll be ok with that. I'm trusting in Him to handle this little hiccup.

We started decorating his room. Nautical!! I'm painting a Goodwill dresser right now. I'm so excited to do these little things for him. We have to work on a video to send him too. I'm having a lot of fun right now.

God Bless Y'all!

For the Love of All Good Distractions

Good grief! It really has been a long time since I last blogged. I have to say I've been rather busy.

So, where to start? Let's see. The dossier finally got sent to Hong Kong. About 6 weeks later ( 2 weeks ) ago we received a ton of questions from the HK government. Most of them were very well thought out. With that being said, I practically had to write an essay to answer the questions they asked.

One of the questions read, "Explain to us in concrete terms how you understand his diseases and what you are doing to prepare yourselves for them". Whew! So basically, I had to take each of his illnesses one by one, explain to them how I understood it, and what we were planning to do to best treat these illnesses.

Most of his "diseases" are life long that he'll just have to learn to live around. It just comes down to finding the right physician to help manage them.

Our sweet pediatrician wrote a fantastic letter explaining that she had reviewed his charts with us and that we knew what we were getting ourselves into. It was really a glowing referral, and I am so very thankful to Dr. Khan for that.

There were also many questions about finances. Oh joy! I deferred to David for that. It should be relatively easy to show why we had way more money in the fall than we do in the spring, mainly because it belongs to Bethany now. But, of course, nothing is easy. For some reason everyone wants proof ;0)

About 2 weeks later we had answered all their questions to the best of our abilities. Now we are praying that that is good enough for the Hong Kong government. The next step is getting the referral which is, as I understand, the approval from the Hong Kong gov't that we can adopt their kid. Once they give us that, we'll get our travel dates, Lord willing.

Please pray for expediency. This waiting process is quite difficult for me. Most of the time I am either impatient, mad, gloomy, irritated, or all of those at the same time. I should be resting in God's peace and perfect timing. But unfortunately, most of the time I do not.

I did beg the Hong Kong specialist for information about my baby. Glory Hallelujah! We got some news! He is now walking and speaking in full sentences, albeit Cantonese. He is also reaching for tiny objects. I'll take that to mean his vision is not as bad as I had feared. Woo Hoo!

I found out the name of his primary care giver is Stella. She is holding my baby in her arms and teaching him how to love. From everything that I've read, the orphans that have a caregiver that they bond with have an easier time bonding to their family. Please pray for Stella as only the body of Christ can!

So, there's the adoption update in a nutshell. I hope I have new news soon.

Oh, and there's been this little thing called VBS that has been going on this week. I'm the director. Praise the Lord for fruitful distractions!

The kids are having a blast! We've got two extra kids going with us, one of which is un-churched. Please pray  that through VBS and gospel presentation God will draw her to Him. That would be amazing!

Now, I will be completely unproductive and go take a nap. Peace out!

Roller Coaster of Love

I'm sitting here at the computer when I really should be cleaning the house. But honestly, I'm sick to death of it. I've got so many things on my mind that I thought maybe blogging would help me chill. So here goes.

This week has been full of many fabulous ups and one not so fantastic down. The I800A not only got approved, but I received it Friday. I had it in my greasy little hands for about 1 hour before I rushed to the post office and overnighted it to Alison, the lady in charge on Hong Kong adoptions. Before you ask, yes, I made a copy of it before I mailed it off.

On Tuesday I found out that we were accepted for the Promise 686 Grant. If you aren't familiar with Promise 686 I'll give you a quick tutorial. Perimeter Church in Atlanta ( a Presbyterian PCA church like us) backs this grant. It is a matching grant of up to $8000. Meaning they match dollar per dollar up to $4000. You have to live within the greater Atlanta area to qualify.

I cannot tell you how thrilled we were! And the crazy part is that we already have people giving us money. I'm trying desperately trying to figure out how to set everything up. What an amazing problem to have!!

I have to tell you, I'm not a very eloquent prayer. It usually sounds something like, "Please, please Lord let so and so happen ", or " Please, please Lord heal my kid, save my kid, help him/her find a Godly spouse". See, not very original. But one of my best friends, Allison (who happens to be a wonderful Godly woman), had told me that she prayed for open or closed doors ( in a situation they were dealing with). So that is what I did. And guess what? He has blown the doors off the hinges for us!

We did not have the money to do this adoption. We were in a doing ok financially only because God had led us to Dave Ramsey. We had become debt free in October '10. But we were still working on our emergency fund when we started considering adoption. Money was probably the biggest hindrance to adopting. How were we going to come up with the estimated $20,000 it would take to pay for this adoption? I spoke to some ladies at my church who had adopted multiple times and asked where the money came from? They said that it just comes. What?? How in the name of Sam Hill does that happen? We were about to find out.

For some reason, we decided for forge ahead without a check for $20K sitting in front of us. The first thing we did was have a garage sale. I've blogged about that. It was AMAZING! So to date, we've paid $8700 to the adoption agency and probably $2000 in miscellaneous bills related to the adoption ( passports, I800A, doctor visits etc.) So where did we get the money? We made about $4500 with the yard sale. The rest was just bizzaro. We got a tax refund, and somehow we had the rest of the money in the bank. Crazy, huh? Not crazy, but God. David and I didn't do anything fantastic but trust that God would provide. I can't explain the amount of peace I have had with the "money" issue. I just trusted it would be there. If you know me, you know this is SOOOOO not my personality. I'm a worrier and I especially freak out when it comes to money. God is providing in more than one way.

We still have about $10K to raise. But as crazy as this may sound, I'm looking forward to raising it. This adoption process and helped strengthen my faith. If we are doing His will, He will provide. That has been shown to us over and over again.

So, as for the bad part of the week, I think I'll wait and see if that situation sorts itself out. It could look pretty bad for a company and for their employee. I'm not into bashing them publicly on the internet. Not saying I wasn't ticked, but I've had time to calm down. David and I made a decision together to turn the problem over to our pastor and elders (if it is not handled properly). I am much more at peace knowing I don't have to go after Goliath by myself.

Ahhhhh! I already feel better ;0)

Hopefully Alison will mail out the dossier to Hong Kong on either Monday or Tuesday. Then we get to wait for Hong Kong to give us a referral. After that we travel!!! Please pray for an expedited referral. The little boy we are adopting is turning 3 in July. We'd really love to have him in our arms to celebrate his birth.

One last thing I forgot to mention about praying. David and I had about an hour long discussion with our pastor a few weeks ago. It was and interview for a grant that requires your pastor to ask you some questions about salvation etc. It turned into a "mini" counseling session. It was fantastic. One of the little gems I picked up while there was another way to pray. My pastor said that a way to ask God to expedite our plans, and help with funding would be to make our case to God. Basically list the reasons why we want to hurry up an get to Hong Kong. List the reasons we need the money to make this trip possible. I am so grateful for this advice. David and I are truly blessed to have such a wise and Godly man as our pastor.

That is all for now. Hopefully we'll have that referral soon!

Would You Like Some Cheese With That Whine?

It is so hard to write on my blog when I'm frustrated. I think it will sound whiny and pathetic. But maybe if I get that out of the way real quick it won't sound so bad??? So here goes!

It is taking forever to get the I800a form back. For those of you who don't know the "adoption lingo" that is some form that has to go to INS. Once they take a look at it they send me a form to get our fingerprints for our VISAs. It's been almost 7 weeks and still no appointment for fingerprints. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!

The adoption agency is calling INS every other day. They are also submitting some form to speed up INS. Ha! Speed up the government. Good one.

If this form doesn't work they'll have to get GA's sentator, Johnny Isakson, involved. I'm just so over this. I asked if there was anybody I could call and bless out. They said no. Dangit!! I really need to unload on the government employee who is holding up the process. And people wonder why I REALLY dislike the government. Hmmm???

The super, fantastic, incredible news I got last week came in the form of pictures. They sent me pictures from the orphanage!! I screamed and cried and smiled! And then I did them all over again. I also showed everyone around me the pictures. Since David was at work and all my friends weren't around I had to show them to the Home Depot guy and the ladies at the dry cleaners. Bless their hearts, they pretended to be happy for me at least.

It was great taking the pictures to church yesterday and showing him off. Everyone clucked over him just as I had hoped. It was great. Now they have a picture in their heads of the little boy they've been praying for.

I'm hoping I can put his pictures here on my blog. We'll have to wait and see though. They are very funny about putting kid's pictures out there.

In other news, Calvin signed up for football. I think it is a conspiracy b/w my son and my husband to see how much stress I can take. He'll be playing for a home school league but I hear they are fierce. Great.... Calvin is tall and thin. He wants to play wide receiver. I assume this means he wants to be the one to catch the ball when the QB throws it. Eeek! I just hope he's fast.

I hope all of y'all are doing well. Thanks for reading!

Social Security Numbers and Such

My social security card arrived in the mail today. That thing was a pain in the rear end to get a hold of. I am so excited it is here!

Why, you ask, am I so excited that a government issued ID card has arrived? Well, because it is the latest piece of information that was missing which I desperately needed to finish up some of the paper work.

I think I am close to being done. I have to take some of the paper work to the county clerk and then take it to somewhere in Atlanta to get the state seal. This is a monstrosity of a pain. But, I'm jumping through these ridiculously silly hoops with a smile so that I can get my hands on our baby.

Woo Hoo! Join me is saying Hallelujah, Praise the Lord! There is no way my social security card could have gotten here this quickly without a little help from our Lord. It was less than a week ago that I went to the SS Admin to put in the request. It had to be mailed from Baltimore or Boston (some where starting with a "B").

OK- I'll post more soon when I know something.

Adoption & Stomach Viruses

Good grief! It has been a long time since I have updated my blog. Well, hold on to your hat. Here goes.

Adoption:

The home study was finished and approved in December. We paid for it ($3800) so now it is put to rest. We still owe about $4000 in adoption fees. Hopefully David's W2s will hurry up and get here, the government will issue our refund check, and we can pay that fee.

The next step is the dossier. If I understand right, the dossier is similar to the home study but it requires different documents which are specific to Hong Kong. I spoke to the lady from Bethany who is in charge of adoptions from Hong Kong. It looks like we are still looking at traveling late summer(ish). That is assuming the funding is there.

When I started writing this post I remembered I had to pay for the I800A (about $900). I believe that has something to do with immigration. I really can't keep up anymore. I think it takes about 2 months to get approval.

Please don't hear me complaining about money or the high cost of adoption. I am simply stating how much we owe. For those that are considering adoption, you need to know what you are facing. David and I also know that God will provide one way or another. This is a big leap of faith for us. We really don't know how we'll get the money to pay for this. All my friends who have traveled this road before me have said the money will come.

I have been working on applying for grants. I just can't emphasize how much NOT fun that is. If it were just about filling out a form and signing on the dotted line that would be one thing. But unfortunately, you fill out forms, sign on the line, and provide about a bazillion documents to prove that you are legitimately adopting. What they don't know is that perseverance is my middle name.

Life in General:

Holley Kate has had a stomach virus this past week. Again with the not fun. She seems to be getting better slowly. Gatorade and soda crackers have been our friend. School work has been minimal, at best, this week. Calvin has used this to his advantage. What he didn't realize is that I would have lots of time to spend with him doing English. :0)

Oh and one more thing. Even though we haven't "matched" with our little boy in Hong Kong we have already picked out a name.

We have always given our kids family names. Holley is actually my great great grandmother's maiden name. Kate came from David's grandmother, Mary Kate. Calvin is David's dad and grandaddy's name. Jeffrey is David's middle name as well as his uncle's name.

David and the kids were happy with the name we picked out but I was still struggling with it. And really it was all because both of his names (first and middle) came from David's side of the family. Yes, I am petty like that. However, the other night I stumbled across a book at my house that chronicles the Rushes since the original one (Abraham) came over Germany. Guess what?!! The name that we had picked out is the same name of my great, great, great, great, great Grandaddy Rush. Woo Hoo! I'm happy with it now.

I'm not going to announce the name now. But if you really want to know, my loud mouthed kids will probably tell you. I just want to keep it somewhat under wraps until we are matched.

As always, David and I appreciate your continued prayers. The kids are memorizing Romans 8:28 right now which I believe is very appropriate to put here. It is what I repeat to myself when things seems to not be working out the way I think they should be.

²⁸ And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.