Say what?!?

This is what the mantle at the Wolfe house looks like today....do you notice those 3 little letters?!?!

We got a call from our social worker today that our agency received the hard copy of our LOA (Letter of Acceptance) from China today!! This was MUCH faster than we were expecting, since it has only been 47 days since we received PA. What's next, you ask? We will be waiting for USCIS to process our I-800, so the US Consulate in GZ can access our immigration approval and file and Becca's visa will be getting processed. Then we'll begin waiting for TA (Travel Approval). Got all that? ;) At this point, our best guess is that we could travel in just 2-3 months to bring Becca Fei home!! 

Earlier this month, we sent a photo album to her orphanage, so that she can begin getting familiar with our faces. I am so grateful that she now knows she has a family, and that we are coming for her!! Please be praying that God would continue to prepare her heart, and that the photo album might help Becca to recognize us and ease with her transition. (You can also pray that Brody gets potty trained...just throwing that out there. He will not go to K in diapers, he will not go to K in diapers, he will not go to K in diapers. OK, now I feel better.)

On a more serious note, there are families that we know going through this China adoption process who have been waiting three times as long as us for their LOAs. My heart just aches for these sisters and brothers, but I hold onto the hope that God holds time in His hands and has a purpose for His glory and their good. Please join our family in praying for these blessed families that God will sustain them until the appointed time when they are able to bring their little lambs home!

Introducing...

We are so excited to introduce you all to our precious little Rebecca Fei (aka Becca)....

We have officially been matched!!! I just don't have too many words right now, but we are just praising God over here in the Wolfe household! We have been waiting over a month to hear whether we had preliminary approval to adopt her, and we got the news this morning! Becca, here's a song for you, darling...praying that you would know you are oh so loved!!

"You weren't an accident. You weren't mass produced. You aren't an assembly-line product. You were deliberately planned, specifically gifted, and lovingly positioned on the earth by the Master Craftsman." - Max Lucado

Press On & Wait

Here's the latest, folks! Our family received our Log-In Date (LID) from China on May 24th! Several weeks ago, Josh and I were praying and looking at lists of children who are ready and waiting for a family in China. There was a little girl we requested more information about, and we have sent in our Letter of Intent (LOI) for this precious little one! We're so excited to see if this is God's plan - if this is the daughter God is going to place in our family. The China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption (CCCWA) is the body that oversees the adoption of Chinese children. The CCCWA put a new database in place right after we sent our dossier to China. Unfortunately, there have been a lot of kinks needing ironed out with the new database, and everything has pretty much stalled at this point. Once things are up and running again, we hope to hear that we have Preliminary Approval (PA) for the little girl who God has laid on our hearts. Normally, PA is received about two weeks after the LOI is submitted; our LOI showed up in the system on June 7th, but with the database complications - we aren't sure when to expect to hear from China. We trust that God is sovereign over the timing and the outcome, so we press on, abide in our Refuge and wait! At this point, we know that we are (at the very least) to be praying for this child...so we will do what we know! Please pray with us (as we try to hold on to our sanity through this wait)! 

I have been working like crazy getting ready for our final fundraiser - see details on the sidebar! The event is this Saturday, and I am SO excited about how it is coming together! There will be a catered dinner, silent auction and scavenger hunt - thanks to several amazing people from our church family!! I can't wait to post about the event - hopefully next week! If you can't make it -- feel free to check out the Facebook album of silent auction items and then message me if you are interested in placing a proxy bid. We also got word last week that we received a matching grant, which is HUGE for us!! Praise God - He just continues to grow our trust in Him and His mighty provision!

The kids and I are enjoying a "low-key" summer, and we've started working on getting our daughter's room ready. We also wanted to share that we are planning to name our daughter Rebecca (and call her Becca). Rebecca was my great-grandmother's name and is my middle name. That side of my family actually used to call me Becca when I was younger. I have always loved the name, and I can't wait to pass it along! Becca's quilt "Treasured" was featured in a quilt show over the weekend (along with 350 others!), which was really fun. My Mom and I got the chance to tell several ladies our adoption story, too. Here's a couple pictures from the show! Thank you to all who sponsored a block! Hope you all are enjoying the summer so far!

"He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High

will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.

I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress,

my God, in whom I trust.” (Psalm 91:1-2, ESV)

Numbering Graces

In the last month, I had two friends recommend the same book  -- One Thousand Gifts written by Ann Voskamp. Last week when Brody and I were checking out at the library, that very book was sitting there, behind the desk ready to be re-shelved. So, of course, I had the librarian add it to our already abundant pile. I won't bore you with a whole book review here (if you want that, you'll have to friend me on Goodreads), but one thing this book did was refresh my perspective and encourage me to be totally present in the now. It's a particularly good reminder for me, as there is so much we are anticipating in the future. The book is centered around Voskamp's decision to take note of the little things and write a list of 1,000 things she is thankful for - gifts from God. She has been numbering graces for over a year and half by the conclusion of the book, having passed 1,000 long before. If you like to read, I highly recommend it - just be prepared that she is very poetic, and it may weird you out at times. ;) Regardless, Sydney and I have decided to embark on a similar exercise this summer....and I cannot wait to actually start putting ink to the page. We plan to pass all this waiting time by numbering some of God's infinite graces to us! 

Our biggest news lately was that our dossier was sent to China on May 13th!! Get ready for a whole bunch of crazy adoption acronyms...the first of which is DTC = Dossier to China. We are now waiting and praying for LID = Log-In Date. In the meantime, we had our first matching grant interview, and we should have much more news a few weeks from now -- as far as both funding and paperwork progress!!

We are absolutely thrilled to be surrounded by a church family who is so supportive of adoption, and part of our church family/sweet friends, the Brannon family, is hosting a garage sale fundraiser for us on Saturday June 1st!! I can't tell you how encouraging that has been to us...God is using this experience to show us what a burden is lifted when the Body of Christ comes together on mission. We also just finished up our Pampered Chef fundraiser today, and we raised $240!! Thank you, ladies!! Lastly, we are working on our final (what a blessed word that is!!) fundraiser - a benefit dinner, silent auction and scavenger hunt - which will take place on June 22nd! Please pray that God would smooth out all the details - there are so many graces to count surrounding this event already...more on this to come. As for the quilt, I only have the label left to stitch on, and I recently found out that it's going to be in an upcoming quilt show called "Georgia Celebrates Quilts!" It's my personal prayer that this may create opportunities for gospel conversations among friends attending the show!! Another wonderful support we've been blessed with is our local children's hair salon, Pigtails & Crewcuts. They have been collecting change for our adoption (and sharing our story) throughout the month of May! Too many graces to count...seriously, all the cups we own are running over at the Wolfe home. If you are ready to order more coffee from Just Love, use the coupon code "MEM10" now through Memorial Day and get 10% off your order!

I pray you would not miss God's graces to you today...SLOW DOWN and watch a child play, listen to the birds and the wind in the trees, savor the taste of the food He has provided, feel a drop of rain on your skin, take in the sweet smells around you...and give thanks to the Creator and Sustainer of all things. No doubt there are times we become blind to God and His graces to us, but we have a God who turns ashes into beauty. Miracles surround if we just open our eyes to see His goodness and glory. I'd like to close by sharing two quotes from the book I mentioned above; these I found especially meaningful, because these are graces that have been given to all who follow Christ, regardless of what circumstances surround you: "He washed our grime with the bloody grace. He drove the iron ore through His own vein...Need there be anything more?" and "Anywhere - in the kitchen scrubbing potatoes, in the arching cathedrals, in the spin of laundry and kids and washing toilets - anywhere I can have intimate communion with Maker of heaven and earth." Believers, as children who have been adopted into the family of God, we have the unfathomable graces of redemption, reconciliation and relationship with God...praise Jesus!!

"Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him, we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." - Romans 5:1-5 ESV

Why China?

I realize it has been WAY too long since I've blogged - so sorry, this is LONG. It has been slightly crazy around these parts as of late. Anywho, I've recently had several people ask me why we decided to adopt from China, so I've been inspired to blog about that this time. Then I'll close with an update on all our recent adoption happenings!

For as long as I can remember, I have been interested in, drawn to and burdened for other countries. Some of that may be in my blood. My Grandpa Thompson had an incredible "heart for the nations" (a phrase I am borrowing from my lovely cousin Hope). He and my Grandma traveled extensively (to more than 20 countries on 5 continents), preaching the gospel, training pastors and loving on children everywhere they went. Grandpa had a special love for orphans and children living on the streets. My parents also spent time living in Haiti on a mission/school project. My older sister Sharon actually spent her first year growing up in Haiti. Because my family had been so involved in international missions, I grew up with family friends from all over the world. What a blessing and privilege I consider that to be!! I have always had an adventurous spirit, so I was thrilled to take my first mission trip to Brazil during my sophomore year of high school. I was thrilled to see more of the world and to serve the people however I could. I didn't realize how much that trip would change me or how much I would be blessed. We visited a small orphanage in rural Brazil, and my heart has never been the same. I can still close my eyes and picture several children that I bonded with on that trip. Those images are tattooed in my mind. My heart was torn in two to leave those kids without a family. I still remember our bus pulling away, and just praying through sobs, "Lord, what can I do?" At that moment, I knew God was calling me to something more than "the American dream." David Platt expresses it perfectly in his book Radical, "We learned that 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.” Now more than 15 years later, I'm getting to see the beauty of God's work in my heart unfold. Oswald Chambers once said, "If through a broken heart God can bring His purposes to pass in the world, then thank Him for breaking your heart." Broken heart, thankful lady...right here.  

When Josh and I first started pursuing adoption, we began talking about where we would adopt from. We are insanely systematic in our decision-making (just ask me about how we came up with our children's names sometime!), and we tried to talk and pray through every consideration. Our first inclination was international - mine, because of all the history I just finished telling you about, and Josh just had this overwhelming tug toward Asia from the get go. However, being the calculated, over-thinkers we are, we did a lot of praying and a lot of research. We first reached a clear decision on the adoption agency that we wanted to use (Lifeline Children's Services). Check out their website, and you may just melt like I did! What an incredible blessing they have been through this process!!!

What I think people are most curious about is why we chose China over domestic adoption. Obviously, this is not meant to discourage domestic adoption (or adoption from other countries); this is just the story of how our family came to adopt from China. We've said before - adoption is awesome, regardless of location! EVERY child deserves a loving forever family, regardless of where they happen to reside or what ethnicity they are. That being said, there is a dramatic difference in what domestic orphans are facing versus those in other countries. I'd like to share some statistics on international orphans mentioned in an article by the Adoption Law Firm: 

"In fact, out of the 167 million orphans, 120 million will never receive any education whatsoever. About 60% of these orphaned girls will become prostitutes, and 70% of these boys will become criminals by the age of 18. 10-15% of these children will commit suicide before the age of eighteen. Every year, 1.8 million are forced into human trafficking, prostitution, or the pornography industry, and 11 million will die of a preventable or treatable disease. These children have no chance at improvement. While orphans here are struggling, orphans oversees are dying."

Read the whole article, if you'd like more information about this. Internationally, children age out of the system very young (in China it is at 14), and they basically have nowhere to go at that point. Having seen and known personally what obstacles orphans face in other countries, I was all the more drawn toward international adoption.  We began speaking with a lady from Lifeline about different countries that they work in and devouring all the information. We knew that (at this time) we wanted to adopt a child close to our other two children in age (0-5 years), and we were open to and excited about children who needed specialized medical care (we've been through lots of that with our bio kids). We had not mentioned Josh's draw toward Asia, but she immediately thought China would be a perfect fit for our family. This being our first adoption, we were even more attracted to their program as we researched it further - it is established, predictable and stable. The fees stated are the fees charged...no hidden costs, no bribes, and they are reasonable compared to many other countries. It is also part of the Hague Convention, with laws designed to protect the rights of these children. The China program requires only one visit in-country (and only about two weeks long), which was great for us since we have two other littles at home. Orphans in China have literally been abandoned or removed from their homes, because it is illegal to place your child up for adoption there. China does a local search for birthparents and screen of each child prior to deeming them eligible for adoption, so custody is final. So, when both parents travel, the adoption is finalized in China. Every new piece of information we received just confirmed that China was where God was leading us; it was a great fit for our family. Again, it was a personal leading/calling because we have a personal God!! I hope this sheds some light on all those questions, but feel free to e-mail me if you have any others! Sydney and Brody are getting so anxious - they talk about her every day. We were at the zoo a couple weeks ago, and they wanted to take a picture in the bamboo. They are thinking of their sis and asking "Where are you? Come home!"

As for recent happenings, we have received our USCIS/Homeland Security approval from our biometric fingerprints!!! Now we are waiting on the consulate, then the next BIG step with be Dossier to China (DTC)! All the paperwork on our end is ready and waiting with our agency. We've begun to work with our matching buddy, too, which is REALLY exciting!! We'll be sure to keep you posted. We have also been approved through an organization call AdoptTogether, so that families can make tax-deductible donations towards the last half of our adoption expenses! See the link on our sidebar for our AdoptTogether page, and I also put together a flyer on the sidebar if you'd like to share our story with others. I have finished the quilt top, and I'm starting to practice on the longarm so I can quilt it this month.

We also sent in an application for one more grant, held a fundraiser at Panda Express and we're planning what I hope are our last few fundraisers. I am hosting a Pampered Chef party on May 16th (see details on the sidebar), awesome friends of ours are hosting a garage sale on June 1st in Acworth, and a really fun benefit dinner is in the works for June 22nd. More details to follow!! Let me be honest, I'm exhausted. Fundraising has been a full-time job, but it has also been a tremendous blessing to see God work through so many individuals and families to bring our girl closer to home! Thank you for buying a necklace, thank you for sponsoring a quilt block, thank you for eating egg rolls, thank you for handing us a check, thank you for donating books and other goods, thank you for volunteering your services, and thank you most of all for your prayers and encouraging words. We are incredibly blessed to be surrounded by such a supportive community of folks!        

"Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you." - Philippians 4:4-9

Wholeheartedly Waiting

"If the Lord Jehovah makes us wait, let us do so with our whole hearts; for blessed are all they that wait for Him. He is worth waiting for. The waiting itself is beneficial to us: it tries faith, exercises patience, trains submission, and endears the blessing when it comes. The Lord's people have always been a waiting people." - Charles Spurgeon

So, we are waiting. We sent off our paperwork to immigration almost two weeks ago now. We know they received it, because they cashed our big fat check and sent us a letter saying so. Within the next week, we hope to receive an appointment from them for our biometric fingerprinting. Then we'll be back to more waiting! We sent all our other dossier documents to our agency last week, so they are ready and waiting for our immigration approval....then we will be "DTC" or Dossier to China! Then we'll be back to more waiting! And this is how it goes in the world of adoption. We signed up for this year plus of waiting and expected it, but some days it still seems SOOOO long. We're anxious to see our little one's face for the first time, to give her a name, to bring her home. I've been studying the book of Genesis with BSF International this year, and it's been so good for me to be reminded of all the patriarchs of my faith and how they had to wait (frequently decades) for God's perfect timing and fulfillment of His promises to them. I also remember a sermon by Gary Brooks (our pastor in St. Louis) from a couple years ago on "waiting." He spoke about some biblical examples of waiting, and how it's so clear that God values waiting and He wants His people to be a waiting people. You see it in almost every book of the Bible. Knowing this, I am excited to see what God does during our waiting period! While we actively wait, we've completed 6 adoption grant/matching grant requests; I mailed 4 of them off today! We probably won't hear news from those until late summer/early fall, but I'll keep you posted if we do. Most organizations have periodic deadlines and only make grant decisions a few times annually. 

On a side note, I wanted to share a coupon with you for Just Love Coffee. If you order from them through our link on the sidebar, part of the profits go directly toward offsetting our adoption expenses. This code is good for 10% of your order from now until April 8th! Just enter "KISSTHERIM" in the coupon code box at checkout. We also still have some beautiful handmade wooden cross clocks ($40), soaps ($3), scented wax tarts ($3), a 31 thermal tote ($15) and jewelry for sale ($24 - more jewelry coming in a couple of weeks) - just check out the facebook album HERE and HERE to see what is left! Also, Josh's dad (who made the clocks) is now making custom furniture, and he has offered to donate 10% of any orders to our adoption fund. If you have any interest, let me know - I'll get a brochure to you! 

Quilting has been another exercise in patience for me! This is only my second quilt top, and I'm so thankful to have my Mom teaching me! I have made quite a bit of progress lately. I finished making each of the 20 blocks, and now I'm working on piecing them together and getting all the borders ready!

  

We'll keep you posted on any further developments! If you are also in a state of waiting, be encouraged!!! God is faithful and is always at work. His plans will not be thwarted.

One Step at a Time

We had our second garage sale fundraiser over the weekend, and it was a great success! We could not have done it on a colder weekend, and there were snow flurries both days. In spite of that, we had steady traffic and raised over $1,200!! It was a lot of fun, too. We got to talk to about a dozen people who have either adopted, are in the process or who are involved in orphan care. We even talked to a few people who are praying about pursuing adoption! So exciting!! A great big THANK YOU to all those who helped in a variety of ways! 

Last week, we received a draft copy of our home study report, too!! We sent it back with a few minor changes and should get the final copy very soon. Thank you for persevering in prayer with us!! We are now one step closer!!!

I have been making progress on the quilt, as well. Here's a recent pic of the quilt blocks that I have finished, and I have another 4 blocks started.

We are still selling the pottery jewelry - I have 5 pieces from the new batch left (see the Facebook album HERE), and I should have more pieces in a few weeks. See the post "Jewelry, anyone?" for further details. Josh's parents and sister-in-law have also donated some items for us to sell to raise funds - solid wood cross clocks, handmade scented wax tarts and soaps and a couple of Longaberger and Thirty-one items. See pictures of the available items HERE.

We are so blessed to be a part of the Church, and we have seen the gospel in action all around us throughout this process. Our brothers and sisters in Christ have sacrificed time, goods and money to be a part of God's work in this world and in our family. We are so humbled to see God's hand in this every single day!!! Let us continue in this state of grace as we press on to a state of glory!! 

"Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality." (Romans 12:9-13 ESV)