Sloooow Movement

A short little update...

I have decided this adoption process is definitely going to strengthen my patience! Our home study is STILL at the agency here, waiting for final review before they submit it to our adoption agency.  We have been in contact with our home study agency several times, there is not anything wrong on our end, but the person who does the final review had a family emergency-so we are, understandably, experiencing a bit of a slow down. We are hopeful it will be to our agency by the end of this week.

We had a great Christmas just being home. There is so much to be thankful for, and a day of family time is just what we needed after the craziness of the past few months. Our kids were pleasant all day, we are all healthy, and we are so looking forward to Z being home for next Christmas. My parents came into town on Christmas afternoon and we all just played games, snacked on yummy treats, and listened to our kids and my sister's kids run wild and make memories.

We also had another little surprise on Christmas Eve in the form of another generous donation to bringing our boy home. We are continually in awe of our friends and family helping us with donations large and small, prayers, and love. We are so thankful for all of you out there near and far.

In the next few days please join us in prayer for our home study to be able to be signed off and sent to our adoption agency so we can start the process of having our dossier certified through the various government agencies. Please pray for our boy to know we are coming and for him to be well taken care of until we can be there to get him, and please pray for us as we are on this roller coaster of paperwork and emotions.

Much Love,
Aaron and Sarah

Feeling the love...

This last week has been a wonderful source of support from so many. On Sunday, our small group at church had completely filled the "Change for Change" jar and needed us to take the money and deposit it so they could fill it up again. The kids in our group were so proud of adding change to the jar every week, and we were so happy to receive it. We have also been filling up a jar here at home and all together with change and purposeful donations we deposited another $107.34 to our Z account!

And then, Tuesday at work, one of the sweet girls at my office (Presley!) came up to my desk and handed me a card. Well, 'tis the season and I was so excited she had given me a card--I thought it was from her cute little family. So a few hours later I finally had a chance to open it. You guys-it was a card from everyone at the clinic with money inside! They had a "garage" sale and bake sale for us!! I knew the sales were going on, but we do a lot of sales for the United Way, so I assumed this was another one. As soon as I opened that envelope and read the card, I quickly zoomed all the way to the other side of the office to just hug Presley. The efforts were from everyone, but she was the only one I knew of right at that second and I just burst into tears. The other nurses thought something had happened, but soon found out I was just overwhelmed with gratitude. I have always known the clinic I work for is amazing, like I feel like I completely belong here. But then, to have them "in secret" hold a sale for us...and a sale that I embarrassingly did not contribute to as I have been SO overwhelmed with paperwork and extra hours. We are just in awe. 

Aaron and I also requested from any family members that wanted to give us a gift-that it would be a donation to our adoption journey. We received a few cards this week and I am so so excited to show you this...at the beginning of the week we were sitting at $3874.66 in total donations-which is a lot of money. After Sunday we went to this...

And now...it's even HIGHER! Look over at the right side bar (hint-if you are on your phone and don't see the little thermometer, scroll down to the "view web version and click here) This is SO amazing. We are so beyond thankful for the generosity shown now and always. Along with the donations we have received, we continue to receive kind words, gentle hugs (emotions run high right now) and prayers for us and our boy. We can never express with words how much it means, but please know every thought, every word, every prayer are so appreciated.

Many thanks, 

Aaron and Sarah

Home Study Visits DONE!

We had our 4th (and final!)home study visit today! Every day we are getting closer to getting our paperwork over to China. Our social worker should have our report finished by the middle of this week to submit to our adoption agency for review. After our agency reviews it and requests any China required changes we should be ready to start submitting documents to the secretary of State. I am hopeful that possibly Friday we will be able to take our documents to our Secretary of State, but I realize that this may not happen if there are many changes that need made. We are also acutely aware that Christmas and New Years are just around the corner, which is exciting, but also involves the government agencies we need being out of the office much of the time. So, we continue to pray for patience as we remember God is in control of the timing.

We are also getting ready to send another package off to our boy. A few people from a facebook group I am in suggested the books from Hallmark that you can read the book and it records your voice. I didn't even know these books existed! And they are on sale for the holidays! So, this afternoon we headed to Hallmark and found these!

I am so excited to start this little project tonight. I think we will try each reading a page so he can hear all of our voices. He will likely not understand the stories unless there is a nanny at the orphanage who speaks some English, but I love knowing that he will hear us read to him even when we can't be there. We will probably send him the Rudolph book in this package and then the Goodnight Moon book in the next package. And just a side note, I read Goodnight Moon to all of my kids as babies--so you can imagine when I saw it sitting on the shelf that I had a little moment of thankfulness that I can "read" it to our little guy even though we are halfway across the world.

We also found this little helicopter to put in his package-I sent him a stuffed animal in the last package-but have since learned that most orphanages do not let the children have any stuffed animals because they cannot disinfect them.
I remember Titus playing with these toys when he was about Z's age, so we are hopeful it will be something new for him to play with that the orphanage will let him have since they can easily wipe it down.

The last couple of weeks also seem to have brought alternating emotions of excitement and frustration.  The rules and paperwork are set in place for a reason by the government for safety of all involved, but it is frustrating knowing our boy is growing up a little more every day without a family.

Thank you again for your continued love and prayers. It has been so encouraging to know people are praying for our guy and for us-so please continue! Specifically please pray that we are able to start the sealing process (the process where the dossier goes through the different government agencies to be stamped with approval) and for this process to go quickly, pray for our boy to have someone who is loving on him and explaining to him that he has a family waiting on him, pray that we have patience as this all progresses. As always, we are grateful for you all.

Home Study #3!!

We are so very close to being done with our homestudy! Yesterday we had our 3rd visit-and we are so happy that it went just as well as the last two have! There was more talk about our lives and how we handle conflict, our children, discipline, etc. It is actually nice to get to know our caseworker and we feel like we have already learned helpful hints about helping Z adjust when we finally do get to bring him home.

We have our 4th homestudy visit next Saturday, then our agent compiles all of the specific documents and we get to move on to submitting our dossier. We are cautiously optimistic about how quickly this is moving so far. We still don't have an exact timeline on when we will be able to bring Z home, but continue to be hopeful for late spring/early summer. If we happen to be able to travel earlier, we would be absolutely ecstatic.

We continue to be so thankful we have been able to pick up extra hours at work. While we work extra and plan our little family Christmas, we are also continuing to plan an auction fundraiser. If you have anything you would like to donate or any ideas that may be helpful-we would be so grateful! Please email me at journeytonumber4@gmail.com with any ideas. And stay tuned for the details on this and help us make it great!

In the meantime, we are so anxious to get to know this sweet boy of ours. Our agency will ask for another update in January-please pray that the orphanage responds to our request quickly. He should have gotten his package last week-so we are hopeful one of the nannies is helping him read the book we made him that introduces our family and that he has hope that we are coming for him soon. 

In the meantime, while we are enjoying our holiday season-we are so hopeful that next year there will be one more stocking hanging by the fire, one more sweet smiley face, one more set of footsteps plodding through the house and one more set of cheeks to kiss goodnight.

Thank you all again for your love and support. And a little hint for all of you mobile readers out there-if you scroll to the bottom of the screen where it says "view web version" and click on that, you can see the whole blog, including our fundraising goal area and our story! Thank you all!

Aaron and Sarah

Moving to blogger! And link to the old blog

Hi everyone. I have been struggling with the format of the old wordpress blog, so I finally just decided to make it easy on myself and go with what I know--blogger.
Here is the link to the old wordpress site for the beginning of our story...journeytonumber4.wordpress.com

Thank you always for thinking of us and praying for our sweet boy!
Aaron and Sarah