He is Risen ...

He is risen indeed.

Another good week in the Law household. We received our I-800 approval and now we are waiting for our Article 5. It seems our paperwork only comes when we are too lazy to hit the mailbox. For the second time in a row, we had important news waiting for several hours just a hundred feet away in our mailbox. Needless to say, I am will be in no rush to check the mail until we get home from China.

The weekend had us just a little busy. A quick trip to visit my family on Saturday getting us home after 10:30 followed by an Easter Sunday lunch with Christine's family. I love the interest that so many family members have in our journey. Sandwiched in between this was an early morning of getting ready for church, finding Easter eggs in our family room, helping prepare a biscuits and gravy breakfast for the church, a terrific sermon on the Legend of Folded Napkin, and the always chaotic Easter egg hunt at church. The link to the online sermon is below.

http://new.livestream.com/D1Naz/events/1992599

I am finishing up Sunday with the 30 for 30 about NC State. I absolutely love the Jimmy V speech at the ESPY's

On the downside, we have hit a little speed bump in with fundraising. Our hope was to avoid putting anything on credit cards (at least to the point of collecting interest), but one of our sources of funds fell through and as so many people have felt over the last few years, the economic crunch is hitting mining machines again. So I will be taking at least four weeks of unemployment this year. But I know God will provide financially and I GET FOUR MORE WEEKS TO BOND WITH GABI!!!! The latter is very exciting for me if the capital letters didn't give it away.

After a week of travel and family activities, I will be enjoying a vacation day on Monday as the kids have their final day of Spring Break.

A Very Strange Spring Day

Today has been quite the day.  After a beautiful spring day on Saturday, we had a few overnight snow flakes turn into a pretty sizable winter storm.  While I headed north to the Bloomington airport through some icy roads, Christine and the kids headed east to Sidney to join in the 60th anniversary celebration of her grandparents.  Both of us drove past numerous cars in the ditches.  I nearly made it into a ditch near Maroa while Christine got stuck as she pulled into Sidney.  The day turned out well for our family in the end.  My plane was the only one to take off from the airport this afternoon while a handful of others were cancelled and the anniversary celebration was moved closer to home.  60 years is definitely something to celebrate.  Apparently it is rare enough that the likes of Hallmark and Amazon haven't commercialized the special mark in their relationship.  They are loved not only by there family but by so many around town.  Congratulation Richard and Irma!

Our paperwork pregnancy is nearing an end.  All signs point to us traveling by June.  We are hoping that since this is our forth child, that maybe we will go early and travel in May.  Strangely enough it seems like a long time coming and like it has just been coming so quickly.  I think the later is a little bit of the fear of the unknown.  Will we have a child that falls in love with everyone in our family from day one, or will we have major struggles.  The answer is probably somewhere in between.

This process is full of emotions.  Had you asked me a year ago that I would shed tears for someone thousands of miles away that I never met, I probably would had laughed at you.  Each day is filled with excitement.  Excitement of seeing Gabi in person in just a few short weeks.  Excitement of hearing Lyndsey pray so earnestly to get her sister home.  Excitement to see Aiden do little things like making Gabi a Valentine's card or changing the background on his iPod to an American flag next to a Chinese flag.  At the same time I have struggled with celebrating Christmas while Gabi is without a family or singing happy birthday to a picture.  Good moments are constantly followed by difficult ones. But knowing she will be in my arms soon makes it all worth it.  God has opened my heart to this little girl and we pray that God is preparing her heart for us.

Christine had a chance to visit the Champaign School for the Deaf this past week.  She came back very excited by the program.  Apparently Macon County has never used them which means families have had to take up the cost and the travel themselves to use the service.  So my next big ask is to help bring this experience to Gabi.  The money is probably the smaller part of this ask. Finding a way to get her to and from each school each day is the big need. 

Thanks for joining us on our journey.  Our family very much appreciates the emotional and financial support we have received from family, new friends, and old friends.

China Approval!!

Wow! What a day.  Our family received the best news today – we have received approval from China to adopt Gabi!!  I keep saying Gabi is coming home soon.  This is the final countdown – WACAP has said about 2 ½ months to travel.  However every timeline they have given us has been longer than the actual time frame.  They told us 3 – 4 months for approval and we received it in 39 days!

I want to share with you an amazing God moment we were able to share with our children.  My timeline in my head has always been to have approval by March 15^th, since we started that was my goal.  So last night I told the kids that we all need to pray and ask that we receive approval this week and believe that God would answer this prayer.  The verse that was coming to mind all evening was Matthew 18:19 “Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.”  How amazing that God answered our prayer and we were able to witness what happens when we live out God’s word.  This adoption has brought our entire family closer to God and continues to strengthen our faith. 

So what’s next?  (Remember our agency typically gives longer than normal wait-times, average right now seems to be 8 weeks)

·         I-800 approval (3 weeks)

·         I-800 approval forwarded to the National Visa Center, NVC forward approval to U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou City, China (2-3 weeks)

·         U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou signs off on Article Letter 5 (2 weeks)

·         CCCWA issues Notice to Travel (TA) (3-4 weeks)

·         Discuss travel date and request consulate appointment

·         Appointment confirmed

·         We book our flights!!!

Look how short our list has become.  Now I am worrying about what to do with kids and dogs if we travel before June, but it is a great problem to have because that means Gabi is coming home soon.

Thank you to everyone who has joined in our celebrating, everyone who has prayed for us (please keep those prayers coming), and everyone who has contributed to our adoption fundraising.

We still have our fundraiser going on through March from the blog Worthy of the Prize: http://www.worthyoftheprize.blogspot.com/2013/03/meet-law-family-our-newest-adoption.html

We have also had amazing pizza fundraisers at our church; we have been selling noodles, greeting cards (we sold 50 boxes!) and our timeshare.  Thank you!  Gabi is almost home.