Day 45 & Counting

Well, we are on Day 45 of our wait to get our LOA (Letter of Acceptance). To review, that is a form that China will send us after completing their review of our dossier. It asks us to sign it and return it, verifying that we still want this specific child.

We should have had an LID (Log In Date) by now, but it looks like we’re going to be like a handful of other families that doesn’t get an LID until we receive our LOA. Our LID probably occurred during the last week of August, considering we were DTC (Dossier-To-China) on August 17.

I got excited last week because a family who was DTC on August 11 got their LOA and I thought we might get ours this week. That doesn’t look likely now, because with the time change “today” is almost over in China and tomorrow, most offices will close for the Fall Moon Festival, with most of them not reopening until next Friday.

In the mean time, our patience is being tested daily. I found the following Hebrew Bible verse in a daily devotional this morning. It seemed quite pertinent to our situation.

“The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.”
-Lamentations 3:25-26

Next Tuesday, our little girl will turn 9-years-old. When we first started this process (in January), we thought there was a decent chance we would be celebrating this day with her. Of course, I’m disappointed that we’re not, but we did send her another care package. If you’d like to read the letter that will accompany it, I included it in a previous blog entry: http://bringshalinghome.blogspot.com/2010/09/our-response-to-shaling.html

She will also be receiving a cake at some point (hopefully on her birthday, but that isn’t guaranteed). Most of the gifts we selected for her are pictured below (new dress, disposable camera, 3 more pictures of us, two Chinese yo-yos), but she will also get a variety of children’s books that are not pictured:



I’ve been itching to blog more, but with not much happening, except waiting on that elusive LOA, there hasn’t been much to say. However, I do want to leave you today with a quote given to me by a friend of mine, Sarah Engelbrecht. She and her husband Seth are coworkers of me and Brock and have a beautiful internationally adopted daughter, as well as a handsome son. They are a great resource for us.

"Orphans are easier to ignore before you know their names. They are easier to ignore before you see their faces. It is easier to pretend they're not real before you hold them in your arms. But once you do, everything changes." (quote from "Radical" by David Platt)