Let me introduce you to our daughter, Paisley

Tuesday, May 6 blog post is one that I wrote not only as a prayer, but a cry to God asking that He give us a glimpse of the face who we will have the honor to be her parents. It's silly to think that of all the things that I was concerned about that knowing our little girl's face was so high on the list. I almost felt ashamed to ask for prayers to deal with not knowing since pregnant mothers can't see pictures of their children until they are born unless you count those 4D pics, which kind of scare me to a certain extent. Five months of wondering who she will be was literally making me restless that I would wake in the middle of the night and pray and dream about her sweet little face.

His command is simple: ask and ye shall receive. That's exactly what He has done. He has heard YOUR prayers for Daniel and I to see the face of our daughter within a week's time of May 6. On Monday, May 12th, He brought the sweetest little girl's picture to my computer screen. After discussing this little girl with Daniel that evening, I emailed Karisa, our social worker, to see her file. Karisa emailed us back on Tuesday to say she was not currently on hold with another family if we wanted more time to study her file. Since Daniel and I wanted to make sure we prevented placing kids' files on hold every other day, we felt like placing this little girl's file "on hold" was the step in the right direction.

(Background: You see, back in January (actually during the snow/ice storm), we placed our first child's file on hold. We spent 4 days praying, researching, and dreaming over this little girl's file. We were heartbroken when we discovered she wasn't the child for us. In fact, we were so consumed with this little girl that we asked to have her file placed on hold a few months later, but found out she was on hold with another family. Needless to say, we take an "on hold" file very seriously.)

Thus began our one week of placing this little girl's file "on hold". And what happened during that week was truly God. A peace about her and her medical circumstances came over both of us. We know there will be difficult days with any child we adopt, but there was something about this little girl that all we wanted to do was protect her, care for her, love her, make her ours. The thought of losing this little girl made both of us ill.

So what did we do next? We emailed Karisa to see what needed to be done about submitting a Letter of Intent (LOI) for this little girl. Since we are currently in the home study phase still, there were things that needed to be done in order for this to happen. We spent the next week getting our physicals along with the results, completing the necessary paperwork and letters, and stressing about turning everything into China on time.  We weren't promised a lot of time with her file due to certain circumstances so we were racing against an imaginary clock.

On Friday, May 30th we sent our LOI to China for this little girl.  Let me just say that we spent nearly 3 weeks waiting for the phone call that would change our life forever.

At 10AM on Thursday, June 19, I received the call from Karisa telling us we received Pre-Approval (PA) for our daughter.  What a sense of relief it was to hear those words!  She is ours.  We already love her so much!  We are beyond thrilled to go get her.

Thank you so much for the continued prayers!  Your prayers are changing lives especially for a little girl who now has a mommy and a daddy who love her very much, something she has never known until today and she will never experience not having a mommy and a daddy ever again.  We look forward to sharing more about her with you!

Paisley