Called to Adoption?

Our adoptions of Daniel and Luke have lead several friends to ask us about the need for homes for orphans. The reality is that there are so many children in the world who need a home. They don't need designer clothes, or a beautiful bedroom, or an ivy league education. They simply need a family. We would love to pray for you if you are feeling the tug in your heart to open your home to one of these children.

We would love to see other families open their hearts to adoption. The need is great. As Christians we are commanded to care for the orphan. For some of us that means adoption, or maybe being involved in orphan care programs, and for others it means supporting those who are foster parents or adopting. Either way, we are called to care and to be active in the care of widows and orphans. It is a command.

Our hearts are obviously in China at the moment, so if you have any questions about the China program feel free to ask away. There are hundreds of thousands of orphans in China, and of those a few thousand are adoptable and just waiting to be chosen. Surprisingly, most of the waiting children in China are boys! It is no longer a healthy infant girl adoption program. It has changed over the years to a special need, mostly boys program. There are still girls waiting for families, there just aren't as many waiting as there are boys. The children range in age from one to 13. The special needs range from very mild to more severe problems. Their biggest special need is that they need a family. 

I have the great joy of being on the team of a great website called "No Hands But Ours." It is all about China special needs adoption. Please visit this site to view a few of the many many children who wait for a family: 

http://www.nohandsbutours.com/category/children-who-wait/

These pictures are from Luke's orphanage. The boys listed in this post are all from his orphanage: http://www.nohandsbutours.com/2014/01/20/waiting-child-highlight-boys-2/

Please let us know if we can pray for you or answer any questions about the China adoption program.

Last Day in China

We have reached the point in our trip where there are no words left to write. We are tired. We are ready to be home. We are busy packing up our smelly, sweat filled clothes. We are dreaming of the sweet hugs in our near future. 

Enjoy these pictures of our last day. 

See you on the other side!

Guest author Kaila

Sorry to blog so late, we were very busy here in China. So our last free night in Nanjing,  we took a boat ride down a beautiful river. Luke was playing his favorite uh-oh game, not caring at all. I was by the window, so I got a lot of pictures for you guys! So we walked down to the Confucius Temple's boat dock. It was later than we had ever been up in the evening. It was not late at all, but we slept early every night.

Here is the dock:

This is what the boat looked like:

It was hard to get pictures because someone kept slamming my window shut. His phone is in a lot of my photos. So please ignore the phone/ window in some pics.

Here is the beautiful dragon lights:

This is a bridge we saw:

I'm trying not to put in too many photos, but there are so many to choose from.

Here is Mom and Luke by the boat dock:

This is them by the dragon:

We can't wait to get Luke home! He will soon be a little oompa-loompa like Daniel.

Here is all of us in the day:

Guest Post by Halle

Hi, this is Halle, in the past two weeks I have had a hard but also exiting time. Thank you, because me and my family could not adopt without God and your prayers.

Last Monday we were at the movie theater watching Earth to Eco. Thumbs up! 

Last Wednesday Samuel, Daniel, and I all washed the car for fun, and got wet thanks to dad!

Today we went to the Aquarium of the Pacific, and visited all the fun underwater animals & birds.

On the way home from the Aquarium of the Pacific we went to McDonalds for lunch. Daniel was filled with laughter in the car!

US Consulate Appointment and Feeding Update

Today is the day we go to the US consulate in Guangzhou to get Luke a US visa added to his passport. This is the very last step needed for him to gain entry into the US. Once we land in the US he is instantly an American citizen.

Here we are outside the consulate, waiting to go in. Once inside no cameras or electronics are allowed so we have no  pictures of the oath ceremony or fingerprinting.

Sweet one:

Luke is doing a tad better with eating. He still does fairly well with solids and spoon feeding. He eats three fair sized portions a day. Bottles are still not his favorite, but he is slowly getting there. He will only drink 2-3 oz at a time so I am trying to offer the bottle more often in an effort to get more in him. 

For those wondering, Kaila and I are eating well too. There have been a few days where we have both had tummies which were on edge and did not eat much, but overall we are eating well. Although we don't have pictures of all our meals, here are a few.

Yangzhou style noodles:

Basil beef with millions of mushrooms. The mushrooms were a surprise, the picture did not have them visible:

Pan fried sole and fries:

Can you guess what these are?

No English on this menu. Local shop noodles:

Beef and broccoli:

Egg rolls:

Fried rice and deep fried chicken:

Thinly sliced beef with a few cloves. This one was super spicy:

We've also had Papa Johns a few times and the wonderful breakfast buffets at the hotels.

Kaila and I are both tired and oh so ready to go home. We get Luke's passport with visa inside back tomorrow. We leave Guangzhou late the following day. So two more nights and three more days until we head to California. Almost there!

Shamian I Love Thee

Free Day

What better to do than visit Shamian Island?

Here is his sweetness before we left. I had actually not even noticed what his shirt says until my sister mentioned it:

I took a few pictures of the beautiful Shamian architecture and noticed they were all coming out fairly hazy. And it wasn't hazy out. I looked at the lens and it was completely fogged up. That, dear friends, is how humid it is here. The first picture before lens defogging:

The second after lens cleaning:

We visited our favorite shop on the Island and found some gifts to take home. While we were there a pair of dapper teens came in and were bantering back and forth with each other. I, of course, has no idea what they were saying. They eventually came up and asked if they could take their picture with me. I, being the astute mother that I am, quickly assessed the situation and realized they actually wanted their picture taken with Kaila. I, being a kindhearted international traveler, offered up my daughter for this photographic opportunity. Here is the picture I have of myself with the sweet young men. Sadly Kaila forbid me from taking a picture of her with them, a decision which I am sure she will regret in the days to come:

My favorite purchase of the day. I regretted not buying one last year. So this year I made sure to get one. It is legal now to have a Bible, to read it, study it, and to be a Christian. There is a nice sized Christian church on the island. I bought two of these beautiful Chinese/English Bibles. One for our home and the second one I have a plan for. If my dream for this second beautiful Bible works out, I will come back and share about it.

We ate lunch at Lucy's:

And then we hailed a taxi to head back to the hotel. I'll tell you I prayed about as hard as I ever have on that taxi ride. Not because he was a crazy driver. Guangzhou drivers are actually quite mellow compared to the Nanjing roller coaster rides. Here is why I prayed. As is customary, when we hail a taxi to take us back to the hotel, I showed the driver a card with the name of the hotel. He immediately said in fairly good English, China Hotel? I said, yes xiexie. The driver laughed and started driving, I'm sure my accent is quite humorous. We started driving and after 10 minutes or so I could see our hotel in the distance and I told Kaila, yay we are almost there. And then we kept driving right past the hotel. We drove past it fast. I say to the driver, China Hotel, and he replied something something. We kept driving and I started praying. I thought maybe he's giving us the scenic route, maybe he's trying to run the meter up, maybe at the next intersection we need to jump out and find help as fast as we can. I was really starting to get worried at this point. I have never felt this way in China before, not once. In Mexico, where I grew up, I felt this way quite often, but in China never before. Right about this point I began thinking through our options (Chad has trained me well I now realize) and asking The Lord for wisdom. Right about then, about only 2-3 minutes past our hotel the driver slammed his hand on the dash and laughed out loud. I could see the Garden Hotel in the distance (this is the other hotel most adoptive families stay at). He turned the meter off and started saying China Hotel, sorry, sorry, sorry. He turned the car around and headed back toward the China Hotel. It was an honest mistake. He was headed to the wrong hotel. He apologized several times, I am sure he realized it must have been frightening to us. These trips are sure faith building in more ways than one! 

Tomorrow morning is our consulate appointment. Getting so close to the end of our trip!

A Typhoon and A Medical Exam

Friday morning we received Luke's Chinese passport which was the last item we needed from Jiangsu to be able to complete his adoption. We packed up, decided to visit one more beautiful site in Nanjing (the Ming Dinasty Imperial Palace), ate lunch at the Blue Frog Grill in Aqua City, and checked out of the hotel. We did all this before 1 pm. Had I known what the rest of our day was going to be like I would have taken it a bit easier. 

At 1pm we headed to the Nanjing airport to catch our 3:30 flight to Gaungzhou. Long story short, there was a typhoon making it's way through Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and the surrounding areas. We were told our flight would be an hour or two delayed. Every time an hour or two would go by, they would say we were delayed another hour or two. This went on until after 11 pm at which point they began boarding out flight to be prepared for take off when the clearance came. We departed Nanjing close to 12:30 am. 

There were two other families from the US who had adopted children from Jiangsu this week as well. What a Godsend! We spent those long hours together. I cannot imagine if Kaila, Luke and I had been at the airport all that time alone. Grateful for this blessing.

We checked into our hotel at 3:30 am. 24 hours almost to the minute from when I had woken up the day before. We laid down and slept for about two and a half hours. We then needed to get up and get ready to head to Luke's medical appointment to be cleared for his US visa.

The medical exam was easy, we met and chatted with a few other adoptive families (you might notice a trend here-- fellow adoptive families are by far some of my favorite people on the planet!), and returned to the hotel to go over our stack of papers for our US consulate appointment on Monday morning.

In hindsight, the hardest part in regard to the hours of flight delays was that I could not get Luke to eat. He was definitely overstimulated by the bright and loud environment. I coaxed him to eat a few bites of applesauce and 4-5 Cheerios. And that was all he ate. For over 14 hours. This was so very worrisome to me. This little boy cannot go without drinking and eating. He has absolutely no reserves. 

As soon as we got the hotel at 3:30 am I was able to rock him to sleep and get him to take a bottle the only way I have been able to figure out. He will absolutely not take a bottle when he is awake. So here is the sneaky trick. He is a cute little thumb sucker. I have been waiting until he is sound asleep (20 minutes or so) and chomping away on his thumb. At that point I gently pull his thumb out and but a bottle in its place. He will drink 4-5 ounces this way. So so grateful to have discovered this little trick. I try this sneaky mama procedure six to seven times a day and it works about half the time. The other times it wakes him up and he is mad mad mad. 

We will probably never know how much he was able to eat and drink at the orphanage. I do know this, he is a challenge to feed. There is no way a nanny could have dedicated the time I am spending to feed him. She simply would not have been able to allot that much time to just one of the many children in her care. 

I've been in contact with our pediatrician and we will be seeing her within 36 hours of getting home. I told her I had a feeling it was going to need to be a long appointment. There is so much to discuss and look over. We need a strong and quick plan put in place for Luke. I am so grateful for the wonderful doctors who we have at our disposal, especially our amazing pediatrician! We are so very privileged. How many times can I say I am grateful in one post? Here it is again, I'm grateful!

Four days until we begin our journey home.