Monday, Monday! 4/13/15 Update

It's Monday!  Monday's are happy days in our China adoption circles as they are typically "family" days - the days when families are united with their children in China!! Every Monday morning I eagerly look forward to seeing the pictures of families meeting their beautiful sons and daughters who, praise God, are orphans no longer!! What a blessing and an encouragement to watch these stories, share these journeys and then to finally see that first family photo!  We gaze longingly, knowing that someday it will be us holding Lila and shedding tears of joy to have her finally with us.

Latest pic from her BFF's
birthday party

It's hard to believe, but that day for us could be in just 8 or 9 Mondays!  Over a year of planning, working, fundraising, waiting (and waiting and waiting) will all be over soon and we can begin the work of bonding and attaching that is all a part of this adoption marathon. Please pray with us for Lila's heart!  We have read books, attending trainings and generally "know" what things we can expect, but really we have no idea. Each child is unique, with their own temperament, emotions, experiences, memories, fears, etc. We must learn how to love Lila in ways that she specifically needs.  We will learn what scares her, what soothes her, what makes her happy, what foods she doesn't like, what things she likes to play with, how she sleeps, how to make her laugh, and so much more!  We look forward to these lessons but also know that it will be hard work, there will be tears, frustrations, possible even temper tantrums (after all she is our daughter and 2!).  Please pray specifically we will have wisdom and patience as we love her and woo her heart.

As I mentioned we are in the final stages now with travel coming soon.  We are currently waiting for our I800 (permission from US Immigration to bring Lila home) approval.  Once we have that there are just 2-3 additional short steps until we will be waiting for travel approval (TA) from China. When that arrives we  will mostly travel within 1-2 weeks - fast!!! Please pray all these steps go smoothly.   It's a very exciting time!

The last piece is finances.  We have come such a long way and are so thankful for each and every source of funding - grants, personal donations, sales of bracelets, hats, tshirts, and baked goods.
In order for us to travel though we need to raise the last $6000. Its a lot yes, but not compared to how far we've come!!  I posted on our fb page today if just 100 people donated $60 each we'd be there - fully funded!!!  It sounds so doable to me and in fact, we already have our first $60!!!! Yea!  God has been so good to us, proving everything we have needed along the way and we are trusting that He knows exactly where this final amount will come from.  Would you please pray that God will bring in this last $6000. Please pray and consider helping us - any amount is greatly appreciated!!

Book Review: Bringing Lucy Home

Good morning!  I'm back with one more book review - this one more specific to adoption!  The author of Bringing Lucy Home, Jennifer Phillips brought home her daughter Lucy from China last year using the same adoption agency that we are using!  Here's my review:

Bringing Lucy Home tells of an adoptive family's unexpected separation and how God used these events in their lives to write a moving story of love, family, trust and healing. Since my family is currently in the adoption process I can somewhat relate to the events that led up to this family's heart-wrenching separation, but I could never imagine the difficult and emotional journey they ended up taking!

Due to circumstances no one could have foretold, Ms. Phillips and her newly adopted daughter Lucy were separated from her husband and 3 other children in Australia as she waited in American for Lucy's visa. You can feel the heartache and longing of this family as they wait week after week for THE news that will allow them to be together again. I love the honesty and openness as the author recounts each turn of events, each glimmer of hope, each devastating "no" given. At the heart of it all is a beautiful picture of God's relentless love for His children!! It was very moving to read how the author recognizes the hand of God working in their difficult situation to bring comfort, love, and even change into their hearts and lives. No one would wish to go through a hardship like this, but to see how God works all things for His glory and their good is an amazing and encouraging thing!!

Ms. Phillips has a wonderfully engaging sense of humor and writing style which makes reading this book especially delightful! You really will laugh, cry and be fully engaged with this charming book! I wholeheartedly recommend this book!

Today is the one year anniversary of the day we received our approval from LifeLine to proceed with our adoption!! God has done so many wonderful things in that one year and we are looking forward to holding our daughter soon!! :)

A Book Review

As a little aside I wanted to share with you all a book review today.  Anyone who has been through the adoption process knows there is a lot of down/waiting time!!  If you're like me, having good books to read helps to pass the time!  Today, I have a fantastic work of Biblical fiction to share with you BUT come back tomorrow for an equally wonderful adoption-related book! 

It's no secret that I am a huge fan of Mesu Andrews!! She has a gift for taking a story and making it come alive with rich details, exciting twists and turns and beautiful, interesting characters! And The Pharaoh's Daughter may just be my new favorite book from Ms. Andrews (although I truly love them all!).

The story follows the Biblical account of Moses, from a bit before his birth through his young adulthood. If you thought you knew this story, you are in for a treat! Expertly researched and woven together with marvelous detail, this book takes you on a journey of with Anipee, the pharoah's daughter, as she finds the baby Moses and spends the rest of her life loving, caring for and protecting him. I don't want to give away details from the story, but every single character and twist in this book adds to the beautiful story of God's providence! I loved reading of Jochabed and Miraim and how they were able to be a part of Moses's life once he entered the palace. Imagining how Moses would have grown up and lived as a member of Pharaoh's family is fascinating! One of my favorite thing is that each chapter begins with a small portion of scripture which serves to give you a foreshadowing of what may be ahead. Often I found myself going back to that scripture and being amazed at how it fit perfectly!

I can wholeheartedly recommend this book for anyone who loves Biblical fiction and if you've never tried it this book is THE book you should read first! I was, and truthfully still am, captivated by this story! It's one of those books you will want to read without stopping!! Mesu Andrews has outdone herself on this one - a true MUST read!!

I was given an advance copy in exchange for my honest review. Thank you.

Update . . . and a name!

Time for a little update as we patiently (or some days, not-so-patiently) wait for our LOA (letter of approval) from the Chinese government to proceed with our adoption.  We really are in the final stages people!! Once LOA arrives the average time to travel is 8-10 weeks!!! SQUEEEEEEEE!!  If you've followed our FB posts, that is the reason you've seen a lot of packing posts.  I'm eagerly trying to get easy stuff out of the way - buying supplies, washing/ironing/packing clothes for Lila, getting our luggage situation squared away (what we are taking for checked bags, carry-ons, etc.), making copies of documents, making appointments with the travel clinic for vaccines and prescriptions.  All these things keep me busy and really to help to pass the time!  Next week you'll probably see a flurry of . . ."we cleaned this room today" as the Spring cleaning fever and nesting are definitely making their way to the surface!!

As for funding, it may seem like I say this a lot, but we are so thankful and grateful for all the support and donations we have received.  We currently have a little under $10,000 left to raise!!  We have 5 more grant applications out and are praying for some favorable responses to help make up the difference!  God is so faithful and has provided for every amount we have needed each step along the way and we are confident He will provide this last "little" bit! (ok, in no one's mind is $10,000 a little bit, but considering the amount raised so far . . . . ).   If you would like to help - every single donation is so appreciated!! - please visit our You Caring page.  Thank you!!

How about some fun news?  It looks like we may have settled on a middle name for our sweet girl.  We (ok mostly I) have struggled with this decision! Should we include part of her Chinese name? Should we wait and see what the nannies call her?  I think this is a very personal decision for international adoptive families - and the thing is, no one is right!  You just have to do what is right for your family!  I know people talk about "taking away the only things they have", etc., but in the end we decided that the name given to her by the government (or orphanage) really wasn't an emotional thing.  For the most part, the children are given a surname that corresponds to the city where they are located - all of the children at our daughter's orphanage have the same last name.  Of her other two names, one is most likely a name given to every child born that particular year, or found the year she was or something like that.  So you can see, no one lovingly cared for her and spent time with before deciding on what name would fit her personality, or "go with" her, or be best suited for her.  It was not emotional.  Names are important in any culture! We all have names we like and names that just make us cringe (I'll refrain from sharing mine since I don't want to offend anyone, but it's no secret that I like plain, old-fashioned, uncomplicated names.  You may not, and that's ok for you and your children!!).

That being said, we have decided to give her the name Lila Mei-Lin.  Throughout this process we have always liked the name Mei since the meanings include, beautiful, pretty and younger sister.  Lin has various meanings including beautiful jade (disclaimer: this is all what we have found online, we have not consultant anyone about specific Chinese characters, etc.).  We like the way it flows together!  Am I going to be sorry about the hyphenation someday? Perhaps, I don't like to complicate things but we just like the way it looks better than un-hypenated.

Please continue to pray with us that we will receive approvals and visas and all the things necessary in a timely manner! We're praying for early June travel, but realize all things are in God's hands not ours.

Funding Update

Oh my goodness did we have a GREAT week last week - probably the best week since we started this adoption journey!!

To recap:
2/9 - Submitted our LOI (letter of intent requesting we be allowed to adopt a specific child)
2/10 - received PA (our approval to adopt our daughter)!  Lila is ours!
2/12 - received a grant from JSC Foundation!
2/13 - received a matching grant from Lifesong!

We are so thrilled to be nearing the end of our adventure!  If the averages hold out we are looking at potentially traveling to China to bring home our girl at the end of May or early June!  WOW! Can you believe we're that close? I'm looking forward to Spring like never before this year!

At the beginning of this process I told you that the total cost would be around $33,000! It's a HUGE amount and really we had no idea where it would come from.  We started out with a few thousand dollars from our home equity account and started praying.  We've sold bracelets (over 157 of them!!!), tshirts (we are selling them again HERE), banana & lemon bread, Emma has made hats (about 50 or so of them!!), and we received many donations with our 2015$ campaign.  People have been so generous and we are forever grateful for their love and support!

All of these efforts, together with the 3 grants we have received (thank you Show Hope, JSC Foundation and Lifesong) we have raised a little over $22,000! Amazing right?!

We are so so thankful!  That means we have about $11,000 left to raise, in about 15 weeks.  There are a lot of ways to break it down, 50 people donating $220, 100 people donating $110, 200 people donating $55, etc.  The bottom line is that we need $11,000.  Can you help? 

Our Lila - look at that sweet face!!!

If you'd like to contribute to our matching grant - every dollar you donate will be matched up to $1,500! - please go here:  LifeSong One-Time Donation.  Click on the drop box and choose Adoption Funding, then another drop box will appear, click on Family Specific.  Simply add our name, Jeff and Julie Masse and our Family Number 5054.  All donations over $50 will be tax deductible and again, matched dollar for dollar!!

We  humbly ask you to consider helping us in this final stretch! Maybe you cannot donate at this time, but you have a great idea for a fundraiser, or you'd like to do your own fundraiser and donate the proceeds??  Maybe you have some things to sell and you donate those sales?  We know that God is in complete control and will bring in the necessary funds!! THANK YOU for being a part of His plan!

UPDATE: BIG News!!

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!!

Happy 2015$

Thank you for joining us today for 2015$ - Two Thousand Fifteens!!   I am so thrilled to start this year - the year we will bring our daughter home! This was the last Christmas season she will go through in an orphanage, the last year she spends New Year's Eve without a family!!  Words cannot express how thankful I am that God has brought us this far in our journey. He has provided for us every step of the way and we are so humbled and grateful!!  As we kickoff this new fundraiser (hopefully the last one!) we are excited to see how God will provide for the financial aspect of our adoption.  We've come to a point where there's a potential for things to be delayed unless we can make some large payments.

"No ONE person can do everything, but we can all do ONE thing!"

I've posted about this a few times over this month, but here's a summary of  the challenge:

• We are looking for 2000 people to make a one-time donation of $15.00 to our YouCaring adoption site.
• Once you have completed your donation, please SHARE this event with your contacts, your FB friends, family, etc.  The more people who see this, the greater chance we have to reach the goal of 2000 $15.00 donations!
• PRIZES:  For every 50 donations made, we are gifting an exclusive, handmade Bracelets For One to a randomly drawn winner!!  (Check out their Bracelets For One FB page if you're interested in purchasing a beautiful bracelet! All proceeds from your purchase go to our adoption fund!)

Thank you so much for taking the time to read and consider, for donating if you are able and for sharing this event.  Visit the 2015$ event page on FB to track the progress!

THANK YOU!!