On the night before...

It feels like we should have "Leaving on a Jet Plane" playing as a soundtrack, "All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go..." Miraculously our bags are pretty much packed and our to-do's are dwindling.

Adoption paperwork packed. Check!
Beijing forecast checked. Check!
Nanjing forecast checked. Check!
Snacks packed. Check! Double Check Check!
Chicken chores allocated. Check!
Toys for Ivan packed. Check!
Toys for Ryan packed. Check!
Bags weighed. Check!

We're ready to go! We leave tomorrow to fly to China to pick up Ivan. It seems so surreal. We'll have a whirlwind tour of Beijing before training to Nanjing to pick up our guy! We'll be there for about a week. Then we'll fly down to Guangzhou, be there for about a week, and fly home via Hong Kong. We'll be flying back home on Saturday, August 20th. We will fly into O'Hare and take the Amtrak to Macomb that night. A few friends and family have asked if they can meet us at O'Hare or at the train station in Macomb to see Ivan - and anyone is certainly welcome to come!

We hope to post pictures and updates as we go...so stay tuned!

Please keep us in your prayers. We know that Jesus is the Chief Orchestrator of this trip and our family. Please pray specifically for peace, joy, confidence, attachment, protection from the enemy, and safety. We are so thankful for our family and friends! You have faithfully walked through this journey with us.  Thank you, also, to the family and friends who will be taking care of our house and chickens! :)

Interruptions

Like many people, I often find interruptions quite annoying.  From the mid-sentence interruption to the timid driver interfering with my speedy progress to work in the morning, I don't take too kindly to what my nephew calls "Good opportunities to practice patience." 

As many have the opportunity to do, I've had much time to reflect on our adoption journey. Pondering the timing of it all, the enormity of God's plan and orchestration, the mystery of complete strangers becoming family members forever, Jesus' love and goodness...among other things.  And as I've done so, a theme of interruption emerges.

After we were married, Ryan and I had our neat and tidy plan to have a strapping pack of biological children and then to adopt from China once we had the "parenting thing down" (I'm sure all seasoned parents are laughing at our absurdity). It was a nice idea. 

But God interrupted our plan with His. *HONK! HONK! Insert massive Mack truck of God's plans intercepting my Fiat-sized plans* Two years and many tears into our plan not working, He showed us the time was right to start the adoption process. (You can read about that here) He knew from the beginning that for Ivan to join our family, we would need to start the paperwork at the right time. 

As my reflections continued, I thought about how this so closely parallels how Jesus brings us into His family. He was willing for his perfect existence with the Father to be interrupted...astonishingly so. To leave Heaven, come to earth, and to be with us and make us part of His family. To die on the cross to pay the penalty of the wrong things we do. Why? "For the joy set before Him..." (Heb. 12:2).  While we are OVERJOYED with the anticipation of meeting Ivan, He counted it a JOY to endure torture (and more) so that our sin might not keep us from being part of His family.  While Ryan and I have endured many ups and downs and financial costs, would we be willing to endure torture, ridicule, and worse to bring Ivan home? This is a sobering thought. 

So what does this type of love require? How do we respond to the God of the Universe who has said, "I want to make you my son or daughter?" (CLUE: He's looking for something more than pen pals.) He's looking for us to accept Jesus' sacrifice as the full payment for all the wrong that has kept us from Him (and would lead us to hell); To joyfully accept His invitation to be His child; For us to follow His Son's example of loving God and loving others; To honor our Father's name in all we do. 

Friends, if you haven't accepted His offer, please consider getting on your knees tonight to do so.  Because He isn't looking to make pen pals, He's looking to make sons and daughters. 

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!

~1 John 3:1

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. ~John 1:12

SPOILER ALERT...

...

...

Adorable little Asian fella coming your way...

Beep! Beep!

The time has finally come...

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:...a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance...[God] has made everything beautiful in its time." 

~Ecclesiastes 3

"Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy."

~Psalm 126

Friends, it has seemed like a considerable time that we have been waiting...
Waiting for the fulfillment of many prayers for children...
Waiting to learn the identity of the child in China God put in our hearts over a year ago...
Waiting...

But finally the time has come to celebrate!  Friends, we have been matched and finally know the precious little soul waiting for us half-way around the world.  

Without further ado, we are over-the-moon excited to introduce you to our son, 

Ivan Daniel Wood

Ivan is 25 months old and is said to be happy and cheerful!  Ivan is my paternal grandfather's name. It also is a Russian form of the name "John", which means "God is gracious" or "Gracious gift of God." We feel the meaning is fitting! Daniel is Ryan's middle name.  It is our hope to travel to China sometime around early August to bring him home!  

Until then, please be praying for his heart, for his upcoming transition, for our transition to parenthood (we hear it isn't just a walk in the park!), for his birth parents (who I'm sure think of him daily), and his current caregiver to whom he is close. 

Not too much of an update...

Being on the tail-end of January, Ryan and I have often reflected in the past couple weeks how we thought we would be preparing to travel to China in the coming days. As with so many things, the timing hasn't turned out how we anticipated.  We continue to wait to be matched, and once we do know the identity of Baby Wood, we will travel approximately two months later.  

Our only update is that we have opened our criteria to include a young boy in addition to a young girl. We had previously expressed preference for a girl, merely because we were concerned for the plight of girls and envisioned a girl when we started the process. Historically, the majority of children adopted from China have been girls. However, in recent months and years, this trend is shifting dramatically and there is a significant need for boys to be welcomed into loving homes. Because we don't feel strongly called to a specific gender, we feel like broadening our criteria puts more control in God's hands.  Ultimately, we just want the precious little one God has planned for our family.  

Please continue to pray for our little one waiting across the world for us, for his/her caretakers, his/her birth mother and father, and for us. 

Adoption Update

As for all farming families, this fall has been a busy one for us!  Combine and tractor wheels started rolling early in September. Dry conditions allowed nearly non-stop harvesting for six days at a time for weeks on end.  (Thankfully Ryan and his dad made the choice long ago not to work on Sundays). Simultaneously, we have been working to prepare our dossier to be sent to China.  

While we have become accustomed to "Adoption language", not long ago we were unfamiliar with the terms describing its various steps. To clarify, a dossier is just the compilation of important documents, including medical records, financial statements, home study reports, and the like, that adoptive parents submit to the country from which they are adopting.  I'm not sure every country is like this, but the Chinese process is one in which nearly all documents have three levels of verification - locally notarized when the parents/other officials sign the forms, certified at the Secretary of State's office in the state capital, and Authenticated at a Chinese Consulate or Embassy. 

Here we are at the Secretary of State's office in Springfield, Illinois. See that little gold seal on the top left of the paper Ryan is holding? That's right - that's our seal of certification. (The seal certifies that the notary who notarized the document is indeed a state-approved notary.)

Next we sent our documents with a courier to the Chinese Consulate in Chicago to be authenticated. I believe the Consulate is basically verifying that the documents are in order and have been certified and notarized appropriately. 

Once returned to us, we made copies and sent them off to our agency to send on to China!

Below we were organizing our documents in order to send them. 

On September 24th we over-nighted them to our agency - Madison Adoption Associates - in Delaware.   We had great hopes that we would be "DTC" (Dossier To China) before September came to a close.

This ended up being somewhat in vain as the Chinese National Day celebrations did not allow our documents to be sent until later in October. For those who may be interested, "National Day" is a misnomer. It is actually National week, as the observance lasted from October 1st to October 7th.  Who wouldn't want a government-recognized week-long holiday?!? Yes, please. Sign me up. 

During that hiatus, we did some celebrating of our own - Ryan's birthday was October 3rd! Birthday cinnamon rolls for all!

Here's my strapping man working hard later in the day. Being the birthday boy doesn't exclude you from work!

Our Dossier was logged into the Chinese system on October 13th! This is commonly referred to as LID (Logged-in Date).  While it felt somewhat anticlimactic since it was over two weeks after we had sent our dossier off, being LID is the light at the end of the proverbial [paperwork] tunnel. 

So where do we go from here? We wait.  But it's the good kind of waiting.  The next step for us will be receiving a referral.  While we don't know when we'll receive or if we'll accept our first referral,  it's so exciting to anticipate learning our child's identity within the coming weeks and months!  It's our prayer to be matched by Christmas. 

Through this process we have been so incredibly awed by how God is at work and how He has moved known and unknown people to support this adoption.  Leave it to Him to do so much more than we ever dreamed or hoped! We are immensely thankful for the outpouring of prayerful and financial support from family, friends, and friends of our family and friends. To date, we have received some form of support from over 75 individuals and families, not to mention a number of businesses which contributed to our Amazing Race.  We've had family/friends organize fundraisers on our behalf.  To each of you we would like to say two things - First, a huge "Thank you!" We thank God for you.  Second, please keep the prayers coming!  While it feels like we're in the 7th Inning stretch, the real journey begins when we travel to China and bring home Baby Wood.  We'll keep you posted until then...