WE HAVE OUR LOG-IN-DATE

This is the email I just received from our agency:

"Congratulations!  Your dossier has been logged in by the China Center for Children’s Welfare and Adoption.  Your official dossier log-in date (LID) is: 8/2/2012"

Excited beyond words.  Those that have previously adopted from China will know what a big deal this is.  Now we wait patiently to be matched with our child & the call from our agency.  Could be weeks, could be months.  Will keep you posted.  In the meantime there is plenty of getting ready to do!  Have I mentioned that we got rid of every possible baby thing we owned at our last garage sale in October?  Yeah, God definitely has a sense of humor.  

THE TIMELINE

After several conversations with friends over the last couple of days, I realized I probably needed to clarify better where we are in the adoption process and what our expected timeframe is.  We began the adoption process in February and have worked diligently over the past 5 months putting together our dossier (that is adoption lingo for our official file that is sent to China).  Our dossier consists of 13 documents including our home study & immigration approval that all have to be notarized at the county level then certified at the state & federal levels & then lastly authenticated at the Chinese consulate for the state in which the document originated.  Because Bart & I were born in different states & now reside in yet another state, we had documents that had to go through 3 different systems......fun, fun!  OK not really, but it's often been said that the paperwork side of international adoption is our "labor".......definitely not as physically painful, but mentally taxing nonetheless yet also worth every minute!!

Our dossier arrived in China on August 1st.  In the next couple of weeks we will be getting our official Log-In-Date (LID) which is what every adoptive family from China anxiously awaits.  Though we could get a call at any moment with a referral (or child they would like us to prayerfully consider adopting), once we have LID the number of children available for us to adopt expands greatly.  We have requested to adopt a little girl with minor special needs around the age of 10-12 months old at time of referral.  As far as "minor special needs", our agency has a list of the conditions we would be willing to consider & as you may remember, Addison was a special needs adoption also.  She had a minor heart condition called a VSD/PFO (or small hole in her heart) that was actually surgically repaired before we got her.  It was thankfully 100% successful.

After we accept our referral, it will be another 4-7 months until we can travel to go get her so she will most likely be between the ages of 15-20 months old by the time we bring her home.  That process has changed a lot since we adopted Addison.  When we got her referral, we had only 1 month before we traveled & it was a mad dash to get visas, travel shots, & a nursery up & ready.  I can only imagine how hard it will be this go around to wait those 4-7 months to pick up our baby girl!

With all of that said, we will most likely be traveling to China in the next 6-12 months.  As we've previously learned going through the process, everything with adoption can change at any moment & the timeframes are always unknown & something you just have to have patience & faith in God's timing. Your prayers as we travel down this adoption road are much appreciated & we can not say thank you enough for walking this road with us!

Below are a couple of pics of our adoption milestones thus far:


Jodi in front of KY state capital after getting KY docs certified

Our pretty docs after being certified in Georgia

The kids had to go along with Dad to get baby sis' docs sealed.  

BEHIND THE NAME

Though we've never met her or seen her sweet little face, she already has a name....Lexi Marie, named after the aunt she'll never meet on this side of heaven, Jill Marie, and the hometown of Lexington where her Momma & Jill grew up.  When we looked up the meaning of Lexi we found out it means "defender or protector of mankind".  How cool is that!  May she grow to know & love Jesus, her ultimate defender & protector, and live to be a mighty defender of her faith & fellow mankind!

THE STORY

This is our journey to adopt our second "stone" from China.  We never could have imagined what God had in store as we followed him down the uncharted path to adopt our first daughter Addison from China in 2006.  It was literally love at first sight & she has brought our family unexplainable joy.  The fire to adopt again has been in us ever since but with planting & pastoring a growing new church then looking at launching a second campus, it seemed as if God's plan for our lives was to focus on "birthing churches" not children...haha.  Well...that was until this past winter when He wrecked our hearts again & allowed that spark that had been smoldering there to become a full blaze.  So here we are, both in our young 40's, two kids in elementary school, in the middle of a huge endeavor to launch a 2nd campus, yet knowing without a doubt that God is leading us to adopt again.  See what we've learned along the way is that God's ways are higher than ours and His path is always greater than ours.  It doesn't always make sense & can put those of us who like to be in control to the test, but what better place to be than clinging desperately to the One who created you.