Saturday, October 26, 2013

Abundantly beyond!

Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think,according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen  Ephesians 3:20-21

Sorry if I am redundant in my thankfulness and amazement over the Chosen Race. The final count for Team Pool was 145! That includes sleepwalkers, kids, half marathon and full marathon runners. Levi and I are grateful for each of you. The race was this morning and was lots of fun...yes running 13.1 miles is fun when you are surrounded by friends and family and running for an amazing cause. I loved meeting the other families and hearing their adoption stories. I loved seeing the huge posters of children who have been brought home with the help of Chosen in the previous years. I loved seeing our children run with their friends, knowing they are participating in bringing their brother home. Chosen is an amazing organization. Levi and I will run it every year. 





Thursday, October 24, 2013

Emotions and lockboxes

I never knew that I could be as emotional during the paper pregnancy of adoption as I was during the physical pregnancies of my oldest three children. I cried at Costco yesterday when Levi texted me the picture of our LOA. I cried this morning when the girls got out at carpool with wallet sized pictures of Elliott in their backpacks. Soon afterwards I cried at Fedex when I mailed off our I800 application. So watch out Team Pool...I may bawl the entire 13.1 miles on Saturday.


If I could get one of the lockboxes that you see on the movies that the carrier has chained to their wrist for this file case I would. It has every single oh so important adoption paper in it. I got so nervous when I left the house with it this morning.

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

LOA

The kids have an announcement to make! We have LOA


This has been the hardest wait so far but thankfully the rest of the steps should be much shorter! I will mail our I800 paperwork to our government tomorrow. That should be approved in about 2 weeks!


Saturday, October 19, 2013

One step closer


Sorry there haven't been any recent post. There hasn't been much to update until recently!!! For the past 78 days we have been waiting for our LOA (letter of acceptance from China). I have to admit that this has been the toughest wait so far. Up until this point all the waits had been fairly predictable. The average LOA wait has been 60 days. Once we past that point I was getting a little anxious. However, I clung to to this verse.

Wait on the Lord: be of courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord. Psalm 27:14.

Knowing that my God is not only sovereign (in control of the entire universe) but also that he knows what is best for me gives me peace. He knows the precise day that Elliott should and will come home. So I will trust that our wait of 78+ days for LOA is in Elliott's and our best interest.

It looks as if our wait is almost over! On Friday our agency told me that we are showing up as approved for LOA on China's online system. So now were are just waiting for the hard copy to arrive. I am hoping we have in the next week or two.

One we have the hard copy of LOA there are several steps before we travel but they are much more predictable... a week here, two weeks there. Hopefully I will have frequent updates as the next 2-3 months will be full of forward progress. As I have written before, one of our prayers was that we bring Elliott home before his second birthday on January 15. There is a very good possibility that will occur!

On another note....The Chosen Marathon is next Saturday. Team Pool has 124 people on it! We are just overwhelmed but the amount of support we have received. Thank you everyone who has signed up! We are so grateful and look forward to seeing many of you on race day. For the sleepwalkers, I hope that you sleep in a little extra and have a restful day :)