Thursday, November 27, 2008

What is in a name?

Many have asked how I came to arrive at the name “Zacharias” for Jack’s middle name (See Michele’s post from January 2). Some suspect I may have pulled the name from the Bible. However, this is not the case. Rather, the inspiration for Jack’s middle name comes from Dr. Ravi Zacharias, the most dynamic and influential Christian apologist of our day. I fancy myself as a very amateur Christian apologist, and Dr. Zacharias teachings and writings have had a profound affect on my life. He has been gifted with a unique combination of incredible intellectual prowess and sincere humility that he consistently puts to masterful work in delivering his messages and responding to challenges to the Christian faith. He is firm and unyielding, yet, gracious and gentle. (He is precisely the type of person that Bill Maher did not interview in his film silly film Religulous). I encourage all of you to visit his website: http://www.rzim.org/, and give a listen to one of his podcasts.

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Hoping ...


At day 102, not very close to the expected day 70, we finally received our LOA (Letter of Acceptance)! We had stopped counting days because it was a little daunting seeing day 80 then day 90 go by. So, for sanity's sake, we stopped looking at the calendar. As it turns out, we got a sweet treat for Halloween in the form of a phone call from our agency.


It should take about 21 days (and this seems to be on schedule) from when China receives our LOA to receive TA (Travel Approval). All we have to do is sign it and overnight it back to the agency. For those of you who followed our trip for Jenna, we received TA the day before Thanksgiving and we left for China on Nov. 30. Jenna's "Gotcha Day" was Dec. 2, which happens to be Jack's birthday. We're hoping to make it over there by then. I'm posting another picture of Jenna with Jack in Gansu, hoping that they will be together again soon ... hoping to finally get my arms around our little boy ... hoping that he will be as happy to meet his forever family as we are to welcome him home.