will she know us?

One question we've been getting a decent amount, is will Mary Carson know us? Does she have any idea what's coming? The short answer is: we don't know.

In October after we got our letter of acceptance (the letter from China that confirmed that Mary Carson was ours), we had the opportunity to send a care package to her. There are a couple of really neat companies that are in China that cater to adoptive families and help them send care packages to their kiddos. One is called Red Thread, and one is called Ladybugs and Love. We used Ann with Red Thread and we couldn't say more good things about her. From the website we were able to select a package and after some advice from others, we ended up choosing a Forever Family celebration care package. We choose this one because it guaranteed that we would receive a couple  more pictures of Mary Carson when they delivered a cake to her foster care center for her forever family celebration that we sent over. Since we only had three grainy pictures of her that were from back in January when her adoption file was prepared, we decided this was our highest priority and choose this package. Here are several of the pictures we got back (I promise I'll get around to answering the question I posed.)

 This picture absolutely breaks my heart. I feel like the kid on the far right is looking over at Mary Carson like, let me see whose turn it is to get a family now... While he waits. Breaks.my.heart. If any of these pictures touch your heart at all please ask me more about adoption!

 The one below is one of my favorites of her.

So many kiddos that need families.

 Heart melting. 

So to get back to the question posed at the beginning, with the care package, we also sent a photo album. It was a soft sided baby photo album. We sent the 5 or 6 pictures to Ann at Red Thread and with each picture we typed what we wanted the caption to be (like we would send a picture of Adam and I and for the caption we would put, mama and baba - the Mandarin way to say dada). And Ann translated the caption into Mandarin characters and put them on each photo so that theoretically her foster family could show the photo album to her and read the captions. For the final picture in the care package we sent this one with our kids holding a picture of Mary Carson. 

So, do we know if she knows us? Nope. We don't know if she's been prepared at all. We sent that photo album, but we don't know if her foster family read it to her or showed it to her or anything. Some kids from her province have come to the family on gotcha day carrying the photo album and totally recognizing their families, and some kids from her province did not come with the photo album and didn't seem prepared at all. So there's the whole spectrum. We have no idea how much she will know. 

What we do know is that gotcha day, the day we meet Mary Carson, will be Monday December 19th. We will probably meet her around 1 pm in the afternoon China time (which will be while you are sleeping overnight on Sunday night December 18th). We know that we will meet her in a Civil Affairs office in Guiyang, Guizhou. We hope that we will meet her foster family on gotcha day, and there should be a chance for us to ask some more questions about her on that day. The other thing we know about gotcha day is that, for us, it is so exciting and celebratory and it is the culmination of this long long stage of waiting and this very full paper pregnancy. But for Mary Carson, it will be scary. It will be the loss of everything she has ever known. It will be the loss of her Chinese caregivers, and the loss of familiar food, and familiar smells, and familiar routines. This has been so heavy on my heart for her. So as we wait for this day with eager anticipation, there is also a heaviness. A weightiness. Think of us and say a prayer for us and Mary Carson as you go to bed on Sunday December 18th for all of these details and for her transition. Set a reminder on your phone. We would so appreciate it!

overwhelmed is an understatement

You asked for a packing post and here it is. Just kidding. Although I did just print out a 7 page single spaced document from the friendly China adoption online community of things to pack for China. My head is exploding. Send chocolate and wine. Actually can I pack those? Anyways, I digress. They weren't on the 7 page list.

Last week was a doozy. We got travel approval (YAY) on Tuesday, and then overnight on Tuesday  night I got the dreaded stomach bug, given to me by a child in the family who shall not be named who had it earlier in the week. Wednesday morning after some of the worst 5 hours of my life, in a haze around 9 am I saw an email that said that we had to find flights and have a preliminary itinerary to our adoption agency by 11 am if we wanted to be able to book flights before Monday due to the Thanksgiving holiday. Insert panic. We are already flying at one of the most expensive times of the year and this basically gave us a heart attack (4 more days, 2 weeks before your trip is like an eternity). We did end up booking flights and they'll be fine, but they definitely aren't our first choice, especially for the trip on the way home. So that was a crazy stressful day. And then Adam got the stomach bug and I worked 4 days in a row and somewhere in there we had Thanksgiving and celebrated the birthdays of our bookends. AND... what?, I'm leaving for China in 16 days? #holdme

From the end of the earth I will call unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed; lead me to the rock that is higher than I. -Psalm 61:2

I have been praying this for myself the past several days. My heart is overwhelmed and exhausted. How is it possible when we are already feeling so depleted, that we are leaving for China in 16 days to add a new member to our family. A precious, longed for, desired daughter. A daughter that we don't know yet.

I. Have. So. Much. To. Do.

And in the midst of feeling so completely overwhelmed, what have I been turning to? Things. Stuff. Packing perfectly. Control.  After an emotional breakdown Friday night, I realized the Lord showed me that I have been putting my hope in the things of this world that I can control in the midst of all the uncertainty that is coming for our family. Having the right clothes and shoes and outerwear and medicine and matching pajamas (I know, but it's Christmas! ok, ok, just laugh) and packing them all perfectly into packing cubes organized by color (ok people, I'm nothing if not type A, and let's be honest, I'm the opposite of a light packer) for five people for three different climates. And having the right gifts for the littles while we are gone and the right gifts for the bigs on Christmas day wrapped in my suitcase for China and having all my Christmas gifts for everyone in both of our families totally done and wrapped. Etc etc etc. It's like my mind can't even contain all that has to be done. So if you get a random email from me in the middle of the night, it's because I just thought of something and I had to get it out of my brain.

Is it actually the trip to China that is stressing me out? No. I love adventure, I love something new, I'm so looking forward to it. Part of my underlying anxiety is the idea that I have absolutely no earthly idea what to expect with regards to A NEW CHILD joining our family. I like knowing what to expect (insert big eyes emoji here). A huge change is coming for our family and I have no idea what it will be like. We get to China and they hand me a screaming (?) Chinese baby and what is it going to be like? I so want to know. But I don't. There is One who does and He is with me and He promises to never leave me or forsake me. And I need to fix my eyes on Him. I love how that verse in Psalms says, when my heart is overwhelmed, lead me... The prayer in that verse is that my heart is so overwhelmed, I have to be led. So this is my prayer. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I. 

As I've been thinking about this, I've been realizing it's somewhat like when people get married. They spend all this time planning the wedding, which is a temporary thing, but the marriage is (hopefully) forever. What they/we should be doing is planning mostly for the marriage. I should be planning mostly for the marriage of our family to this new child and vice versa. But I think that instead, I've been trying to distract myself with the 'wedding' / the details of the trip because the idea of the marriage part is all just so unknown.

So what do we need? How can you help? Pray. If you read through this whole purge from my journal basically, please say a quick prayer for us. That in the midst of this uncertainty we will fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. He is the one who is before all things and in him all things hold together. We need more of Him to do this. And pray for the details. And pray so much for Mary Carson. Because however uprooted and unsettled I feel by all that is about to happen, Mary Carson will feel all the more so. Our change in residence to China for 17 days is transient, but her change that her little body is about to go through, her addition to our family, is permanent. Pray that that leads me/ us into compassion for her. Pray that the Lord would lead our whole family, including Mary Carson, to the rock that is higher than us.

From the end of the earth I will call unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed; lead me to the rock that is higher than I. -Psalm 61:2

baby shower for Mary Carson!

Some of my sweet friends threw me a baby shower for Mary Carson. I loved that they (thank you Lauren, Mary, and Anne!) and all the sweet friends and my mom and mother in law, Vicki wanted to take the time to celebrate this sweet life as we have paused to celebrate the others. Since we didn't really need anything I checked with our adoption agency who checked with Mary Carson's foster care center in China to see what type of donations they needed. They responded that they really needed toys. (well, that narrows it down right?). Although a lot of our toys are made in China, from what I understand, they are made to be shipped out, and therefore if they are bought in China they really cost the same as they would in the States. Which makes them cost prohibitive for many. Basically any toy would work as long as it didn't need batteries or have English all over it. So I registered for some that I thought would work and this is what friends brought. We are taking them all in a suitcase that we will just donate to the foster care center as well. Thank you to all my friends who joined with us in blessing the orphanage and foster care center this way. I know they will be so thankful. Some friends also brought some things just specific to Mary Carson and some adoption themed books for her, which was so great.

All in all it was a great time with sweet friends to pause and pray and celebrate this newest blessing.

These two girls had a blast being with the grown-ups at the party.

I love how they've been friends since they were literally days old.

So thankful for this friend and her attention to detail. Love all the nods to China at the shower. It was perfect!

The same lovie that all our other kids have with her sweet name on it, love it.

So thankful for my sweet prayer triad and the way the Lord has knit us together.

 Wish I had gotten so many more pictures with friends!

Overall, just so blessed and thankful for the blessing of another child. Mary Carson, whose name Mary, means wished for child. She truly has been wished for for so many years. Thankful for this answer to prayer. Oh how the Lord is faithful to us. 

And we have our travel approval!

We received our travel approval! We are going to China! So excited. So thankful to have something concrete. We are coming for you Mary Carson!

We are scurrying now to try to book tickets but will leave around December 14th and will return probably late on December 29th. We will meet Mary Carson for gotcha day / family day on December 19th. It cannot.come.soon.enough. (But so so much to do!)

no TA

Well... yesterday came and went and we did not get our travel approval by the 18th as we had hoped. It was disappointing to have prayed so much for something, to have hoped and truly believed that God would do this, and then to realize it wasn't His plan for us. But we do not lose heart. We are perplexed by this, but definitely not driven to despair. One thing that I just keep thinking is that God knows the entire situation. He knows Mary Carson, knows her heart, knows her circumstances. We don't know her yet. We thought this would be the best situation. But since we know that "no good thing does he with withhold from those who walk uprightly," (Ps 84:11), we know that if it was good for us to travel for Mary Carson and be back by Christmas, we would have. But for whatever reason that would not have been good. Even in the midst of disappointment, He has already been helping me to see some of the possible good from traveling a week later - such as - the big kids will miss less school (there was a concern for possible need for re-enrollment upon our return due to so many consecutive absences and that they could be put into different classes - so now this is no longer a concern) and since we'll be gone over Christmas, there will be less (fun) chaotic gatherings to navigate when we get home with Mary Carson since we'll need to keep her close to home for awhile as she acclimates to family life. So God is working on my heart. And we just continue to trust and submit ourselves to the One who fully knows us, all of us, including Mary Carson. We will keep praying for a timely travel approval. We need to have it by December 2nd to travel to get her in December (likely leaving Dec. 14). We fully expect and trust that this will be the case and are so excited. This means that (baring any unforeseen circumstances) we will meet our little peanut one month from today. God is so good. So excited to celebrate her today with a sweet adoption shower for her thrown by some of my friends.

where we are now and what we're waiting for

So after we received our LOA - letter of acceptance, that triggered somewhat of a paperwork cascade, with each step having to be done before you can move on to the next step. And all of these steps are working toward to final ultimate letter from China which is called Travel Approval. So the paperwork cascade culminates in the travel approval. 

It's all very confusing. Before we started this final 'cascade' Adam and I had to listen to a travel call with our agency that gave us an overview of what the next 2 months would look like leading up to travel. In that call they threw out all these terms like I800, DS260, GUZ, NVC, RTF, Article 5, and TA. After the call, Adam was like, "Do you know what all these acronyms mean?" Well... at that point, yes, kind of, mostly because I am majorly organized when it comes to paperwork (I secretly kind of love it. As a kid I actually loved filling out forms and would do it for fun. Yeah, I'm weird.) Actually if you're thinking starting an adoption, they say that one spouse is usually the paperwork person, and for sure I'm that person in our marriage. I lay out all the forms that Adam needs to sign and put little stickies where he needs to sign. Maybe I should've been a secretary instead of a pharmacist. Anyways, I digress. So we are in this paperwork cascade. It looks something like this...

Clear now, yes?

Basically if anyone out there cares about the details, after we got our LOA, we had our I800 filled out and ready to send the day that we received our LOA. Unfortunately we had to wait another week before we could send in our I800, because we needed one sentence added to Mary Carson's finding information. This was done and we prayed like crazy and the Lord provided that it would be received a week after our LOA, the day before China shut down for a week long holiday (the Golden Week). If we wouldn't have gotten the additional information by 10/30/16, it would have delayed us to travel over Christmas or after. But God graciously provided. 

God really used that week to strengthen my faith that He was absolutely able to do this thing (Eph 3:20), and that no good thing would he withhold from us (Ps 84:11), thus if it was good for us to receive this additional information by 10/30, we would, and if not, then His plan is good and His ways are higher than my ways (Is 55:8-9). 

So we received the additional finding information on 9/30/16 and mailed our I800 that day. The I800 is Mary Carson's first step to US citizenship - it is the form to classify her as an immediate relative to us. We had previously done the I800a which was a provisional approval for us as a family to adopt, and the I800 is the petition to classify this particular child as our immediate relative. So we sent this to the NBC - the National Benefits Center (Department of Homeland Security). It was received at the lockbox on 10/3 and it was approved on 10/17/16. After this I800 approval, our paperwork was mailed to the NVC (National Visa Center) in New Hampshire and logged into their computer, which generates something called a GUZ number. We received that on 10/26/16 and immediately filled out the DS260 that afternoon. The DS 260 is the online application for Mary Carson's US immigrant visa. We had to fill this out from Mary Carson's point of view which was kind of strange. On 10/27/16 we got the PDF of our NVC approval letter and our agency forwarded this to their representative in Guangzhou, China. 

After the representative in China receives our documents, they are able to go to the US Consulate in Guangzhou and drop off Mary Carson's documents. This is the final visa process and it's called Article 5. Article 5 drop off and pick up can only happen on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. So our Article 5 was dropped off Monday 10/31/16 in Guangzhou. The Article 5 process always takes (at least) 10 business days and this is where we are now. We are waiting for Article 5 pickup which is scheduled for 11/15/16 (and yes, if you counted, that's 11 business days). 

After Article 5 pickup, our packet gets couriered/mailed/sent somehow (?) to the CCCWA in Beijing. This is the same organization that our dossier went to. They are the China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption (kind of like a bigger, centralized type of DSS) and they are the ones that will make sure everything with our file and Mary Carson's documents are in order so that when we come to China to get her, there will be no hiccups. Once they make sure that everything is in order they will issue travel approval for us.

We are seriously cutting it down to the wire with travel dates/Christmas. 

Our agency sends travel groups. So there is a group traveling on December 7th. The cutoff to join that group requires having travel approval by November 18th. That would be a 3 day TA. A 3 day TA is the fastest I've ever heard of. They can run up to a week or more. But it's possible. And if it happens it will be totally God. We are praying so much for this group. For one it would allow us to travel and be home a couple days before Christmas. Otherwise we are looking at being gone over Christmas and the week after. It's not the end of the world, and we will absolutely do it, but since we're leaving our little two at home, it will be somewhat sad to be apart from them for Christmas. Secondly, there are a couple other families that will be traveling to our same province in this group and one of the families is taking their two older bio kids like are planning to. Please keep praying with us that we will receive a lightening fast TA and will be able to travel in the December 7th group - this is the desire of our hearts, but we know His plans are for good and whatever He chooses for us, we'll joyfully do. Can't wait for this adventure!