We're Going to China!

We got the call late Thursday night - we got our requested consulate appointment of 12/22! So, we leave this week to go to China! Wednesday to be exact! We've been so busy either on the phone or the internet trying to finalize our travel plans to China and in China, that I'm only just now posting our good news on our blog. Whew. Whirlwind is an appropriate term to describe what we have just been through. We will get Jack on 12/14 and return on 12/24. What a Christmas present!

Thank you to all of our friends and family who have been praying for us - it got a little sticky there for a while. Let's just say that there was a glitch with our paperwork (imagine that?) and that our agency advocated for us. Then, there was the matter of not only finding reasonably priced tickets (we had watched them go up steadily all week), but finding tickets at all, such is the Christmas season. I was told some flights were sold out. And to top it all off, you can't just reschedule your requested Consulate appt. ... you better be there.

So, I think our eldest daughter will testify that her mom and dad were a little stressed. Not to mention that we were going on very little sleep (since China is 13 hours ahead of us, our approval was going to come in during the night). The pattern formed: search for and hold tickets for 24 hours in hopes of getting our appt. Stay up and wait for phone call so that I can buy the tickets before they expire. No appt. Search for and hold another set of tickets for 24 hours. Stay up and wait. No appt. You get the picture.

We were so anxious about all this that both Dan and I turned to God for help the same day, but at different times, realizing foolishly, that we should have done that from the beginning. Once we gave it to God, we finally relaxed that evening and left the computer. We got the call that night. :0)

We purchased tickets the next day - paying more than we budgeted, but trusting God in His plan. Later that day, God blessed us with a sweet, sweet lady from our agency (she handles our internal travel arrangements) who called me and politely informed me that we paid too much for our tickets. She helped us fix that and has since saved us quite a bit of money. To borrow some language from my 13 year old, "Betty, you rock!"

Throughout this adoption, when we have experienced some kind of delay, God has blessed us with a photo of our son, as if to remind us of His goal for us and for us to not be discouraged. During all this, our friend Andy, who had surprised us with a great photo of our son when he visited the orphanage, forwarded another photo he had received from LWB (Jack is in the orange shirt.). And, yes, we know ... Jack is a cutie pie. ;0)