Introducing...

The newest Marshall! We will use the name Zoe here on the blog.

She was born April 28, 2010 and is currently living Xinyu, Jiangxi Province. Isn't she adorable!




The first pictures were taken in December, this next one was taken in May.


Her report says: Zoe was born with a deformity of her right foot and leg. She laughs aloud when being teased. Her nannies are working with her on standing and walking. She babbles and imitates sounds. When she sees a caregiver or familiar person, she will stretch out her hands to ask to be cuddled.

We should be traveling sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas of this year.

Rejoice with us! God is indeed good!

I miss her

Yesterday at church I was sitting in the back, as I often do. It is open back there, and moms of crawlers and toddlers often sit there and to give their kids some space. And I realized that I would probably be sitting there all the time once our little one is home, at least for a few months until I am ready to let her go into the nursery.

I miss her. It feels the same as when my older kids are away at camp. Like a part of me is somewhere else. She needs to come home. Now. But of course the masters of the papers will keep that from happening for at least 2 or 3 more months, maybe more.

And so I think of her as she learns to walk. As she sits in the little cart/high chairs the kids spend a lot of time in. As she sleeps while we are awake and plays while we sleep. As she lives in an institution instead of a family, even though she is already a beloved daughter. And I miss her.

Pre-Approval!

We got Pre-Approval today for our adoption of our little one! Hooray! We are all excited and a little scared :') It still feels unreal that after all this time we know who she is!

We should be able to travel to get her somewhere between November and February.

I've been looking at her pictures, trying to figure out what she actually looks like live and in person. I suspect she has the kind of beautiful eyes that almost disappear when she smiles, but it's hard to tell because she is so serious in all her photos. We will be able to post her pictures and her name once we get our next document from China, hopefully in 5 to 8 weeks.

We still don't know her actual measurements. Hopefully we will get at least one update before we travel so we know what size clothes to buy for her.

We are very blessed.

Bad News

I got a call from our adoption agency today. They told me that another family has submitted a Letter of Intent for the beautiful little girl who we thought was our daughter. Because her file had been transferred to another agency while we were reviewing it, the other family gets first right to claim her.

On the one hand, I am happy that she will have a family, that she will be going home soon. On the other hand I am really sad that she will not be ours. It's interesting how just a week can make all the difference. Her file had been on the shared list for almost a year, and we missed her by a week.

Which brings me back to the foundational truth that this whole process was God's idea first, and His timing is perfect. We will find our daughter and bring her home at the right time.

However, this little one will always have a piece of my heart.

More Prayers, Please...

I sent an email today asking our agency to pursue the little girl in the previous post as our daughter!

Perry and I have both had a growing sense of peace about her, and today we received two videos confirming that she can walk independently on her knees. If she can walk on her knees, surely she will benefit from prosthetic legs!

But here is where the prayers come in: our adoption agency no longer has her file - it has been assigned to another agency. We will need to petition to have her file transferred back to our agency. This will only happen if the current agency does not have a family for her.

Please pray that God's will be done in this situation. We have a great peace that she will be our daughter. That does not necessarily mean that everything will go smoothly!

Here's another snippet of her cute little self:

Seeking our new daughter.

Our family is in the uncomfortable stage of our adoption where we are looking at the children currently available and trying to decide whether one of them is our daughter. It is a kind of surreal process - accepting or rejecting children based on a birthdate, a photo, and limited, possibly incorrect information. This is not how it should be - every one of these kids should have a loving, godly family to care for them. But it is where we find ourselves.

For months before our paperwork was done, there was one little girl who kept catching my attention on the photo listing for our agency. Her picture was darling and determined looking, and she was listed as having a deformity of her lower limbs. A couple weeks before we were ready to start pulling files her picture disappeared from our agency's list. I asked about it, and they said it had been transferred to another agency.

Several weeks ago her photo showed up again on an advocacy group I frequent. The family that was considering her decided she was not theirs. We have requested her file, and found out that she is 2 1/2 and that her lower legs are indeed deformed - unusable. The best case scenario is that she will need amputation and prosthetic legs. Worst case is that she will be in a wheelchair permanently.

We have requested more information from China, and have found that she is now walking on her knees. She seems developmentally on target, but may not be available to us through our agency.

We are left with the question: "Is this little one our daughter?"

Will you join us in praying about this? If we feel God is saying she is our daughter, we will do everything we can to lock her file and bring her home. If not, we will pray that her parents find her soon.

I can't post any identifying information at this point, so here is a picture of her little hand holding something - a ball? an orange?


There is so much we don't know about this little girl, but then this decision can't be based purely on what we know. If it was, we would never adopt any child. But God is intimately involved in this process, and He speaks. Please pray that we hear Him clearly.

DTC!!!

We are officially DTC!!! That's adoptionese for Dossier to China!!!

In other words, all divisions of the United States government have officially approved us to adopt, and all our paperwork is on it's way to the Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs in Beijing. It will be hand-delivered on Monday, and a few days after that it will be officially "Logged In" to their system.

In practical terms this means that we will be eligible to lock the file of any child that becomes available on the shared list of Waiting Children. Up to this point we have only been able to lock the files of children who have been on the list for 30 days or more, and though there are more than a thousand children on the list, they are all boys or girls with more involved special needs than we believe God is calling us to add to our family dynamic.

I believe that sometime in the next 1 to 3 months, a little girl will appear on the Waiting Children list who is meant to be our daughter. Please pray with us that God will make this very clear when it happens!

Progress!

After more than a year of detours and stalls, our Homestudy has been approved by US Immigration! Finally we can submit our information to China, and we are leaps and bounds closer to our daughter!

What next? Once our dossier is accepted by China (this is called a Logged In Date or LID), our agency will watch the current and new lists of Waiting Children for a girl that fits our qualifications and family. They will present us with a file of information on a child, and if it seems the Lord is saying she is our daughter, we will reserve her file and seek permission from China to adopt her. At that point we will travel within 1 to 3 months to get her, spending 2-3 weeks in China.

Yay - we are one huge step closer to actually having our daugher home!

Inspiration

Lately I have been getting my inspiration from the most amazing families out in the blogging and adoption communities. This video from www.k6comehome.blogspot.com summarizes many of their stories. It is worth watching:

We Can All Make a Difference - 2nd Version from connie johnson on Vimeo.