Goodness, I've been really bad at updating! There is so much to tell you that has happened since January 1st!
As I mentioned in a previous update, we mailed all of our dossier documents to our agency on December 15th. They in turn prepared the documents and sent everything out to be authenticated on December 23rd - right before the holidays! I'm convinced God was using this to once again teach me patience
(really wish I could just learn that lesson already)! Over the next 4 weeks we waited for word that our dossier had returned to our agency and sent to China
(this is known as DTC - Dossier to China). On January 23, 2015 we got the great news that we were DTC!! What a great feeling!! An even greater feeling was to come just 1 short week later when we learned on January 30, 2015 that we were LID
(that stands for Logged In Date)!! Amazing!! We were now in for one of the hardest waits of this process - waiting for approval from China followed by Travel Approval (TA).
Only one thing stood in our way - we were not yet matched with our sweet daughter! This has been by far one of the hardest "waits" of this whole process!! If you remember we started this crazy journey of adoption last March. Our homestudy seemed to take forever
(we all know I'm being a bit dramatic here!). Since last March we have hoped and prayed for our daughter, we have watched our agency's list of waiting children and prayed over several of these precious ones. We thought we were close on several occasions only to receive a firm "no" from God. Heartbreak is something we understand and have learned to thank God for. Through these difficult times He was teaching us to trust Him more, to love Him more, to seek His will for our lives
(not what we tell God we'd like His will to be - HUGE!) and to wait patiently
(there's that word again!). It has definitely not been easy! But God is so gracious, He has blessed us with His Word and in it we have found comfort, hope, rebuke, and confidence that He was indeed working out His plan for our family!
We had heard from several people to be ready! Once we were LID it was entirely possible that "the" perfect file would come to us soon! So we waited with thankful hearts knowing we could trust God to reveal our daughter!!
Thursday, February 5th we received a call from our case worker. She had a file that they had just received that might be a great fit for our family and she wondered if we'd be interesting in reviewing it? Ummmm, YES! I waited in front of my computer until the file arrived. It wasn't a huge file, just a few short pages, but as I read it I felt a sense of knowing - maybe it was just hoping - but I definitely had a feeling like this could be "her"! I immediately forwarded it to my husband at work. As we talked about it we both felt that this was very promising so I rushed off to have our doctor review the file. I was also able to forward her file to a sweet angel of a lady in the adoption community who offered to have the file reviewed by a pediatric specialist!
Our pediatrician called me within an hour - yea! It was pretty much a green light from her but we decided to wait for the specialists review. Time to insert that word - patience - again! It wasn't
that long in the grand scheme of things but we waited until Sunday night to get the review from the specialist. The wait was so worth it as it was favorable, pretty much what we had hoped for and didn't contain anything that we were not prepared for!
That night - Sunday night, I sent an email off to our caseworker accepting the file and asking for her to submit a Letter of Intent for us on her behalf. We got a call Monday (1/9/15) morning that our LOI had been submitted and we now waited for PA (pre-approval). A fast turnaround was something I dared to hope and pray for but I kept reminding myself that it would most likely be at least a week before we received word.
It is with tremendously grateful hearts and praise to God that we can announce that we received our PA today - 2/10/15!! Our precious girl has found her home and we are in love! May I introduce to you the newest Masse -
Lila!
Isn't she the sweetest? I am so overwhelmed with love for her, it's indescribable really! We will have more information coming but please pray for us as we now wait for our LOA!! If our timeline continues on schedule we are looking to possibly travel in late May or early June!! I am SO READY!! Thank you all for your prayers and support for us during this last year - stick with us a bit longer - this is the FUN part!!!
Julie
P.S. We are still in the process of raising the funds needed to complete our adoption. If you'd like to help with that please go to our
YouCaring site. THANK YOU so much!!
