We hardly slept last night. The excitement! The anticipation! The chaos! We fit in one of our favorite Christmas traditions last night as our last night all together as a family of 6. Christmas Jammies and hot chocolate from Caribou and the drive through nativity at Carmel Pres where we go to preschool. Adam had a meeting last night. I finished up packing and hung out with Mary and around 11:30 tried to sleep. I dreamt I couldn't fit all of our stuff in the bags and had to pile it together and sleep on it. Adam went on a midnight run and returned around 1 am. Weird night. We were up by 5:30ish for our flight.
The morning was smooth. We got to the airport and got checked in and got through security with no problems.
The kids are SO excited.
We wanted to take a minute to say a HUGE thank you. We have gotten countless texts,emails, and calls of support. We have felt so encouraged,supported, loved, and upheld by so many of you as we have walked this adoption road. You have supported us financially, you have given orphanage donations, you have dropped off items for our trip to our house (necessities, books to read, goody bags for kids, Gatorade packets and pedialyte packets, epi pens, monogrammed shirts, meals to eat before we go, suitcases to use or have, the list goes on and on and on). You have prayed for us. You all have been so amazing and this journey has made us all the more thankful for a community around us that is like family.
As we depart on our first leg of our long travel day (we'll land in Beijing at 4:30 pm Thursday China time which is 4:30 am tomorrow our time), I'll leave you with a couple very practical prayer requests:
-we have a super short connection in Chicago. There was bad weather there (another gate had Chicago listed on the destination board as 'North pole') and we're praying this doesn't affect our flight. Please pray we make our connection and if possible have time to grab food for lunch to bring on the flight.
-Pray for all the logistics of landing in Beijing, transportation to our hotel, and getting checked in. Pray that we don't lose either of our kids 😂. We've super prepared them with photocopies of their passports with the name, address, and phone number of the hotels we're staying at in each city on it and both of our names and phone numbers. These are in their jacket pockets and in their backpacks.
-Pray we stay healthy. And for safe flights.
-Pray our bags make it (all five of them) all the way to Beijing.
-Pray for the little at home and got our hearts as we'll miss them on this adventure.
-Of course for Mary Carson and for her transition.
All in all, we are so thankful and so excited.
“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” Psalms 103:1-5 ESV
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Continuing to pray for you all! ~Jon and Lizzy Richardson
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