It is a banner day at the Altman house! After almost six months of doing home study, gathering documents from various states and agencies, waiting on government offices to do their jobs, calling said offices many times, calling our agency many, many times, notarizing, certifying, and authenticating many documents, waiting, waiting, and more waiting, our dossier is FINALLY on it's way to China! We are officially DTC!!
I am so excited to finally have all of that stuff finished and on to the next step. Now we will wait a couple of weeks for our LID (log-in date) from China, and after that will wait for our dossier to be translated and then approved. (We had pre-approval waaay back in August, if you remember!) Please be praying that these things happen without any problems or delays.
Thanks to all who have prayed for us during this long process, and for your many words of encouragement during the most frustrating times!
I have several blogs on the right side bar. If you are interested in what we will be doing when we go to China in a few months, you should follow along with some other bloggers who are there NOW! "Surpassing Greatness", "Everything Beautiful", and "There's No Place Like Home" are all in China right now, picking up their new sons and daughters. You will have to scroll back a week or two to get to the beginning of their stories, but they are all so wonderful. I can't wait till that is US sending stories and photos back home. :)
We've been experiencing setback after setback in our adoption process, and are very sad that our dossier is still not in China. It should have been there more than a week ago. (Well, when I count all the needless delays we've had, it should have been there like two months ago.) But it isn't, and I'm sad and frustrated, especially when I see things going so quickly for others on this path. But I know that frustration isn't from God. I want and need my heart to be where His heart is about this. I need to rest in His sovereignty, and remember that He loves our little Caylie JiuChang more than we ever will, and that she will be in our arms on the day that He has orchestrated; not a day earlier or a day later.
Please pray with us that God would break through the walls of bureaucracy, red tape, workers' mistakes (and more mistakes), and that His angels would watch over every piece of our documentation until it is safely in the hands of the people in China! Please pray that there would be no further unnecessary delays. And please pray that our hearts and eyes would remain solely on Him.
We are so thankful that our Father has us on this journey. He has spoken and blessed in so many ways. He will see it to the end, and that will be a new beginning!
Today we came home from church to find that our front doormat was covering something on the front step. I went to see what it was, and found an envelope containing a card and a VERY generous monetary gift for our adoption. The card has a sweet message about our adoption, but was not signed. Jim and I just stood there staring at it for a minute or two. We were dumbfounded at the generosity and love of our anonymous friend(s).
To whomever left this mysterious envelope on our front step today: THANK YOU. We are humbled and blessed by your gift of love, which I can only assume came sacrificially and out of obedience to God. You have blessed our family, you have blessed our daughter waiting in China, and you have blessed our Father's heart. You have also been an example of the Body of Christ.
Whoever you are, we bless and thank you.
