This weekend went by in a blur of activity as we prepare to leave on Friday morning.  Lots to be done, lots of arraignments to be made, lots of stress!  Every day seems filled with something else that can take away your joy.  Brittany has been feeling it also.  The last two days have been rough on her.  She has felt a lot of emotion and some fear about the entire process, especially about being sick on the flights like last time.  They prayed for her specifically about this on Sunday at church, but she still has been battling her emotions and the last two nights has ended up crying and going to sleep in our bed.  This morning she actually got mad at Kelly for school work, and I can probably count on two hands the number of times Brittany has been mad.  She even joked with us later today that the “mad” Brittany showed up this morning, but the “regular” Brittany was back.

Anyway, tonight I put her down in our bed and went downstairs for awhile.  Below is the message Kelly found beside our bed:

I don’t know if everyone who reads this believes in God or not, but I can tell you that I believe there is an aspect of spiritual battle when it comes to international adoptions.  Call me kookie if you want, but this is the third time around and I do believe that “someone” doesn’t want these kids to leave their home country and be loved here in the US.  This place isn’t perfect, but I DO believe their lives will be better for being here.

Hopefully I will have a chance to update this later in the week before we leave.  If not, I will post from China.  Thank you for all of your prayers.

Cameron

We are leaving to finally meet our Ali in a matter of days and I am so excited and just can’t wait to finally see her darling face in person, and yet my heart is breaking. My mother’s heart sees a 12 year old little girl, who in order to gain a family, has to give up everything and everyone she has ever known. The depth of her grief I will never know, and yet I feel some of it. I pray we will somehow be the hands and feet of Jesus to her during this process – and to that she will be drawn. The lyrics to this song have become my prayer for her and for my own troubled heart – that God would be the healer of all her hurt inside as his song of Mercy covers her.

(lyrics to “I Will Lift My Eyes” by Bebo Norman)

God My God, I cry out

your beloved needs you now

God be near, calm my fear

and take my doubt

your kindness is what pulls me up,

your love is all that draws me in

I will lift my eyes

to the maker, of the mountains

I can’t climb

I will lift my eyes

to calmer, of the oceans

raging wild

I will lift my eyes

to the healer, of the hurt

I hold inside

I will lift my eyes, lift my eyes to you

God my God let mercy sing

her melody over me

God right here all I bring is all of me

Your kindness is what pulls me up,

your love is all that draws me in

I will lift my eyes

to the maker, of the mountains

I can’t climb

I will lift my eyes

to calmer, of the oceans

raging wild

I will lift my eyes

to the healer, of the hurt

I hold inside

cause you are

and you were

and you will be forever

The lover I need to save me

Cause you fashioned the earth

and Hold it together

God so hold me now

I will lift my eyes

to the maker, of the mountains

I can’t climb

I will lift my eyes

to calmer, of the oceans

raging wild

I will lift my eyes

to the healer, of the hurt

I hold inside

God My God, I cry out

your beloved needs you now

 

It is 9:30 in the morning in China and we just received our appointment with the US Consulate.  That means …

WE ARE GONG TO CHINA!

Been a very long week.  Very stressful.  Always seems to be like that right before things start to break.  But, it is nice to be heading out!  We will be leaving Friday, October 28th and returning Friday, November 11th.  Now we just need to find someone to watch all these kids!

Cameron

We received our TA this morning and have applied for an appointment with the U.S. Consulate.  We are hoping to get a November 8th or 9th appointment with the consulate, which would have us leaving on October 28th.  Man, that is coming quickly!  We will know if that will work out tomorrow morning.  If that doesn’t work, it will be later in November.  So, be praying that we can get one of those dates!

Cameron

I have tried to type this out several times and have yet to get it finished!  Several months ago Kelly noticed that Ali had swollen gums in one of her pictures.  She inquired about it and we were told that was all it was.  However, this weekend we found out that it is a little more than that and has been increasing in size.  The hemangioma on her face has caused some abnormal tissue growth on her gum line.  The updated pictures of her condition were a cause for concern. In addition to how it looks, the growth is causing her some discomfort, especially while she is eating.  They were asking us what we want to do about it and if we want the growth taken care of while she is still in China or if we want to wait and take care of it when we get her here?  This wasn’t the best news we have heard, especially since we already feel like this adoption is taking forever!

Sunday night we spent a fair amount of time on the phone.  Kelly was in one room talking with the medical director of Love Without Boundaries trying to get a handle on what Ali’s condition actually was. Then, she was on the phone with her cousin, Corinne, who is deeply involved with an organziation that works with kids that have hemangiomas.  I was in the other room talking to and texting some of my friends at University of Cincinnati and Cincinnati Children’s Medical Center.  We were both looking for a surgeon who specializes in vascular tumors.  When we both got back together, we had come up with the same results.  Cincinnati Children’s has one of only a few pediatric hemangioma and vascular tumor clinics in the U.S … a short 40 minute drive away! 

Corinne helped us get in touch with their medical director.  The medical director reviewed Ali’s file and called Kelly on Monday and talked to her about Ali’s situation.  She felt that it would be in Ali’s best interest to get her to the U.S. and let the team at Cincinnati Children’s deal with the situation.  Corinne then helped us send the file to one of the surgeon’s who is a leader in this field and works on the East coast.  Seemed like it would be a good idea to get a second opinion.  He, too, called Kelly and spent a lot of time assuring her that there is much that can be done for Ali and that we just need to get her into the U.S.

So, we talked with out adoption agency yesterday and we are going to petition the Chinese government to expedite the adoption process for medical reasons.  Both of the doctors that reviewed her file are willing to write a letter requesting this and supporting our request.  The only issue (like there is only one in this process) is that the entire Chinese government is on vacation this week.  Really?  The entire place??

We were thinking we were going to end up in China picking up Ali in mid-November.  This situation may in fact push that process up, but we just don’t know.  I will try and keep everyone up to date on how this process is progressing over the next several weeks.  Keep Ali in your prayers as she will have to deal with these medical issues for a little while longer while we work to get her home. Please also pray that we can get some pain relievers to her as she is currently not being given anything to help her with pain.

Thank you to Corinne, Ty, and Sean for being so available to answer our questions on a Sunday evening!

Cameron

OK, so I know I am a 1/2-hour early, but I just couldn’t wait any longer.  It is (or will be shortly) Ali’s twelfth birthday!  I can’t tell you how much we wanted to have her home by now, but God has a perfect timing so I GUESS we will trust him in that a little longer.

Things still are moving slowly and various events in China are pretty much putting us on track for travel in mid-November.  The delays are discouraging, especially for Kelly, but we continue to have faith that we will get there when we need to get there!

We sent Ali a care package for her birthday.  Hopefully we will have some pictures to show soon.

Cameron

Last post I said we were moving forward!  And then we stopped.  While the Chinese Government had attached us to Ali, the U.S. Government has been having some trouble!  The I-800 basically does what the Chinese Government has already done;  connects Ali to us and approves the adoption going forward.  Both governments have to acknowledge this.

Well, the US has been working through some problems on our side and, needless to say, we have been delayed quite a bit.  Add to that some of the challenges that have happened over the last several weeks like a little earthquake and a hurricane on the East Coast and things had pretty much ground to a halt.  But, we did hear from adoption agency today that we have been approved and are now … ONCE AGAIN … moving forward. 

By watching the time line of other people, we believe that we will be leaving to pick Ally up at the end of October.  The week of October 24th would be great so be praying for that!  But, whatever the date we will be ready to go.  Also continue to pray about some of Zachary’s paperwork.  We have filled it and believe that it will not cause any additional delays.

Thanks!

Cameron

Two new pictures today of Ali.  First one about broke our hearts.  She is so pretty…

We are realizing that she is tall and thin, and you can start to see that in this next picture:

Kelly has decided it is time to go shopping for yellow clothing!  It looks good.  Britt just thought the top was cute.  Whatever…

Here I am this past week signing the US I800 form basically telling the government that we are adopting Ali.

And here we are with the official Chinese form acknowledging that Ali is ours.  Long time in coming …

We are sending off for VISA’s for Kelly, Brittany, Abby, and myself.  Always nice when we are moving forward!

Cameron

Been a very long time since I updated.  And, pretty much been a long time of nothing!  As a little background, this year China made a new policy that, if you had been to China on an adoption within the last 18 months, you could reuse most of your dossier.  Since we just went to get Caleb last year, this option was available to us.  We thought long and hard about this because if we have learned anything, we have learned that the “easier” way in international adoptions is rarely the “quickest” way!  But, at the same time, it seemed like the prudent choice since 80% of the paperwork would already be approved and there were less documents that China could have issue with.  So, back in March, we decided to reuse our current dossier.

Well … THAT was a mistake!    What we didn’t realize at that point was the problems this policy was going to cause for the Chinese government.  It appears that they didn’t really have a plan in place for how to process these reused dossier’s, so they basically sat in a pile on someone’s desk for several months.  We have tried, and our agency has tried, for months now to get some activity on these dossier’s and it wasn’t until recently that things started to move.  Today, finally, after a long wait, we received or Letter of Approval from the Chinese government.  This basically states that they have accepted our petition and that Ali is ours … once we jump through all the additional hoops required of both governments.  But, the clock is now moving again and it looks promising that we will be traveling sometime in October!  Yay!  We are now applying for our VISA’s and getting the additional documentation needed for the U.S. Government.

On a side note, we went to Michigan earlier this month and met Leah, a girl that is Ali’s age and who was her friend in the orphanage.  They live in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and we stopped on our way out to the sand dunes to meet her mother and her.  It was nice to have a person who actually knows Ali and someone who Ali can meet with here in the U.S. when she gets here.  Brittany and Leah hit is off right away (go figure) and seemed fast friends before the lunch date was over!

Now that there is POSITIVE news and some movement, I will try to update things on a more frequent basis.  But, you know that once we are actually in China, I will barrage you with information!  So you should enjoy the periods of rest you are getting right now!

Cameron

P.S.  A big note of appreciation to Joe Kirby.  Love the Kriby’s, even if Ginger tends to threaten violence periodically (she doesn’t like complainers …).  For all of our adoptions, Joe, as an attorney, has notarized documents for us thereby saving us an extra step needed if we were to use a regular notary.  This past week, on the day he was leaving on vacation, he fit us in to his busy day at work to notarize a last minute paper that China was requesting.  He has saved us so much time during these adoptions that I wanted to make sure I spent a few minutes publically thanking him…