One Less Orphan

There is one less orphan in the world tonight, friends.  Fu Jiu Chang, found in a public meeting place at two days old - named for a city and a year - is now officially Caylie JiuChang Altman with a forever family.  We praise God for His redemption.

Do you think she likes her new dress?  

  Beautiful girl.

Here, let me help you with that, Baba. 

Courtroom in the Jiangxi Civil Affairs building. 

Province of Jiangxi Civil Affairs 

Jim at the passport office. 

Justin being Justin at the passport office. 

  

Tired girl on the way back to the hotel. 

Gotcha Day!

Yesterday was Gotcha Day!  The director of Caylie's orphanage brought her to the hotel at about 3:30.  We were waiting with our guide in the back lobby where it was quiet.  She was a little shy at first, but quickly started playing and laughing with Baba (Daddy) while Mama filled out the paperwork with Shirley, our guide.  She had a good time with all of us, sitting around a table, while we asked questions of the director.  She did NOT want us to hold her, though, and loudly let us know this!  When the director left, she was not upset at all.  Just waved goodbye.  I don't think she knew him very well.  

We played with her for awhile more in the lobby, and then it was time to go up to our room.  She was NOT happy about that.  She tried to walk away from us, and screamed loudly through the main lobby.  Then when we had to get on the elevator, there was serious wailing and gnashing of teeth!  She screamed (not cried) till we got her into the room, and then tried to get out of the door.  She soon calmed down, though, and played with bubbles and cars and stickers and coloring books and bunny and Pooh Bear with Mama and her gege's (older brothers) while Baba and Shirley went to buy bottles and formula.  (Yes, they still have her on bottles and formula!  I figured this was not the day to change that, so we'll go with it till she's comfortable and settled.)

We ordered some fried rice from room service, and she let me feed her that while picking out the shrimp herself.  She did not want her shoes taken off, which did not surprise me, as I'd heard of children needing to keep their shoes on before.  When it was time to go to bed she finally let me take them off and put pajamas on her, though I was prepared not to!  We let her drink her bottle in bed (something I have never done!) while laying with us and she went right to sleep.  After a couple of hours I moved her over to the crib, and she slept for about 10 hours.  She must be Keelan's sister, because she makes a lot of noise in her sleep!  When she woke up this morning we left her in the crib for a few minutes so she could remember where she was and realize that everything was OK, even sleeping in a crib!

She is perfectly potty trained.  She even kept a dry pull-up all night long, even after having a bottle before going to sleep.  Amazing.  If I tell her "la niao", she will go right to the potty and go pee pee.

She is SO stinking SMART.  She sees us do something one time, and does it herself, then remembers the next time.  She copies everything we say and do.  It is hilarious.  Her file says she is delayed in both gross and fine motor skills and in language.  I have no idea why.  She can walk and run and climb and color and play with small objects and feed herself, and constantly tells us what things are in Chinese.

She is SO TINY.  She's more the size of a two-year-old than four.  I think people will be surprised at her, thinking she's younger than she is, and then she will start talking and doing things that two-year-olds don't do!

We are enamored of our sweet girl.  Thank you all for your love to us during these days.  Please keep praying for her heart.  She has only grieved a little bit, and I'm sure more will come later.  Please continue to pray for her foster mother, as well, as she is also grieving a huge loss.

Lots of pics below!

Being carried in with Director Zhou and his helper.

Baba, Mama and gege Justin, waiting to meet our girl.

Our guide, Shirley.

Peek-a-boo with Baba.  (Baba looks a little scarier than he actually was, haha.)

I love her sweet, shy, smile.

Up in the room.  Yes, I do have stickers on my face.

Playing with gege Justin and gege Keelan.

Beautiful smile!

One More Day!

Ni hao, friends!  Today is our second full day in China, so I thought I'd update you on all the happenings so far.  This will probably be a stream-of-conciousness post that I will edit later.  I've only had about 6 hours of sleep in the last 5 days, so I'll deal with grammar and making more sense when we are home, haha.

First of all, a big THANK YOU to our friend Deanna Peterson, who got up at 0'dark thirty to take us on a 3:30am trip to the airport! You went above and beyond, friend!  And I must add that we have seriously great friends, as no less than FIVE people volunteered for this task!

We left Denver at 6am and took the first leg to San Franciso.  Had about three hours of layover there, then headed out on the long flight to Tokyo.  It was very, very long, but Jim had upgraded our seats to the bulkhead, so at least we had a tiny bit more room.  The weirdest thing about it was that by the time we got to Tokyo it was 11pm our time and we were more than ready to go to bed, but since it was 2pm on a sunny afternoon in Tokyo and we still had hours to go, that wasn't happening.

Our plane to Hong Kong on a sunny Japanese afternoon, which was the middle of the night for us!

Killing time during our layover.  So happy we had our laptops.

Keelan took this photo in the restroom in the Tokyo airport.  It's to sit your child in while you use the bathroom, haha.

Another 2 or 3 hour layover there, then the final flight of the day to Hong Kong, which was much longer than I'd anticipated, being an almost 5 hour flight.  I wish I'd taken a photo of the man who was sitting by Justin.  He was an elderly Japanese man who just fell in love with Justin for some reason, tucking in his blanket, putting down his tray for him, showing him pictures of his family, and hugging him and holding his hand at the end.  I was pretty much a zombie by that time, and wasn't thinking so clearly, but it would have been a good photo opp.

We had to go through customs in HK, which took some time, and then we were off to get our luggage and find the van driver who was picking us up.  We stepped out of the building and almost couldn't breath for the humidity.  Totally insane!  I hereby revoke my long-time award of "The Sweatiest Place on Earth" from Miami, Florida and give it to Hong Kong!

It took much longer than we'd planned on to get into China, as our van driver was stopped at the border and told to pull over and take all our bags out.  So we're standing in a garage in China in the middle of the night, after being awake for two nights and having gained (or lost?) 14 hours, and we don't know what the heck is going on, and our driver isn't much help, and uuuugh.  They finally figured whatever it was out and let us go.  We got to the hotel at 1am China time, but by then it was late morning in Denver.  Not fun.

The next day (yesterday - Friday), we took a shuttle to the Shenzhen airport, not even knowing what airline we were on - all we had was the flight number from our in-China rep - but we managed to get that information, find our way through the airport, saw our first child in split pants, took a shuttle out to the plane to board, and had a short flight to Nanchang, Jiangxi, on which we were the only Anglo faces.  The lady sitting beside Justin took a liking to him (he must be cute, or something), and took several photos of him and her together on her iPhone, all the time waving at her friends across the aisle so they would see her sitting by the American kid!  They handed out meat-filled dumplings for the lunch, not a tiny bag of pretzels as on American flights!

Our plane from Shenzhen to Nanchang.  

Met our guide "Shirley" in Nanchang, and made it to the Galactic Peace Hotel by about 5pm.  If I hadn't spent so much time reading adoption blogs and forums over the last 10 months, I would have thought we would die on the way.  The traffic is nothing like any city in America by a LONG shot.  People don't drive in lanes.  They are in and out and pull out in front of each other and honk and honk and honk, and get within inches of each other both on the sides and in the front/back.  Meanwhile, the scooters and bicycles are going by, most with at least two people on them, weaving in and out or traffic.  I can't even begin to do this scene justice.  It is incredible.  The same scene is continually going by our hotel.  It just doesn't stop.  Shirley says there are 5 million people in Nanchang, and it is a sight to see.  I will post photos at some point (they are all on our various phones right now) of the endless sky-scraping apartment buildings.  Shirley took us on a walk to a grocery store (NOT your basic Safeway!) and it was just a sea of humanity.  I will get some photos on my good camera of this before we go.

Today it is raining, so we are hanging out at the hotel.  Jim and boys are in the pool right now - I really should go down there myself to get a glimpse of them in their swim caps, hahahaha!!  If it stops raining, we will go to McDonalds for supper.  Again, we will take our lives in our hands getting there!  There are two other adoptive families coming to this hotel in the next couple of days, so it will be nice to have them to talk to and for our children to play togehter.

TOMORROW is our Gotcha Day!  I need to write up a list of questions for our guide to ask the orphanage director when they come.  (They will bring her to our hotel room.)  I am so excited and happy to finally have our Caylie JiuChang with us, but also nervous, as I have no idea how any of this will go down.  But God does, and that's good enough for me.  :)  We were originally told by in-China agency rep that we would get her in the morning, but our guide told us yesterday that it wouldn't be till 4pm.  Ugh.  So now we will sit around all day waiting!  But, good news for you all . . . by the time you get up on Sunday, it will already have happened, and I will have photos posted.  :)

I think that is it for now.  Please pray for Caylie, as we were told yesterday that she was taken from her foster family and put in the orphanage a few days ago.  Some orphanages do this just prior to adoption, and I don't know why.  I was praying that this would not happen to her, but apparently it has.  So we continue to pray for our sweet girl's heart while she goes though not one, but two very difficult transitions in a matter of days.

Thank you for your prayers , friends.  We need them.

Bags are Packed

Suitcases are packed and ready to go.  We'll be up at 3am tomorrow and on our first plane by 6am.  Our journey takes us through San Francisco, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and finally to Shenzhen.  We'll take another flight to Nanchang   the next day.  

Caylie will come to us on Sunday, May 19.  Please continue to pray for her heart and for her foster mother in these next days.  Thank you friends.

Adoption is Redemption

This is the first photo we ever saw of our Caylie

JiuChang.  This is her referral pictures, taken about 14

 months ago.  It broke my heart then, and it breaks my

 heart now.  Doesn't she look so sad and scared?  I

told Jim on the day that we prayed about this little girl

 that I wanted to see her smile and I wanted to buy her

 some new shoes.  The shoes she has on in this photo

are old and scuffed, and apparently have been worn

by many children in the orphanage.  And now . . . we

 get to do all of that!  God is good and He is faithful.

  He will accomplish all that He has started and all

that He has called us to do.  He is redeeming Caylie's

 life.

Adoption is borne out of loss and grief.  Some people don't realize this.  I've heard people

pray for a healthy baby to adopt, thinking it's just that simple.  But for that to happen,

parents have to first suffer the grief of losing their child, and the child must first go through

 the trauma of losing his/her birth parents.  Caylie has not only gone through that loss, but

 she has spent 4 years without a real family.  She will now lose the only "parent" she has

 known - her foster mother - and will be leaving all the sights, smells, tastes, and sounds

that she is familiar with.  Adoption is redemption and it is good and it totally of God, but it

cannot exist without being borne of loss and grief.  We pray for our daughter's heart as she

will soon go through this trauma and loss.  And we know that while we can love her with

every fiber of our beings, we cannot heal her heart or spirit.  Only our Jesus can do that,

and we are trusting Him to do so.  He is redeeming Caylie's life and making all things new. 

 .Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.  ~ Ephesians 3:20

4 Days to Go . . .

Here it is.  The thing we have been waiting for since last July - our Travel Approval with Caylie JiuChang's photo on it.  This is the last piece of the wait, and now the wait is over!

We have been booking very expensive flights and working with our in-China rep for in-country flights, van services, and hotels.  Of course that last part can only happen when it's daytime in China, and we are 14 hours behind them!  So it's been challenging and more than a little stressful.  But we know that God has orchestrated this journey from the beginning, and He will see it through.  And we definitely know that our sweet Caylie is worth every bit of stress! 

This is our journey as we know it so far:

Wednesday, May 15 - get up at 3am to be at the Denver airport by 4am.  Flight leaves at 6am for San Francisco.  After a 2-3 hour layer, we will board the l-o-n-g flight to Tokyo, Japan.  After another couple of hours in layover, we will board another plane for Hong Kong.  And when we get to Hong Kong, we will take a van to Shenzhen, Guangdong, China, where we will finally get to a hotel!  So yeah. . . it will be a very long day.  Or days. 

We will fly to Nanchang, Jiangxi the next day, where we will meet Caylie a day or two later.  We will stay in Jiangxi for about a week (plans still waiting to be firmed up by in-China rep) and then stay another week in Guangzhou, Guangdong where the US Consulate is, and where all American adoptions are finalized.  Then we'll spend a couple of days in Hong Kong, and fly home on June 3.

Hopefully we will have internet service in each hotel, and I will be able to update the blog and possibly even Facebook.  We will just have to see!  We will download a VPN, but will not know until we get there whether it will work.

Please pray for us as we are planning and packing and traveling.  We want and need to be at our best for Caylie .  And please, please pray for Caylie.  She has already gone through so much loss in her short life already, and now will be leaving the only family she has known when she leaves her foster parents' home.  She may recognize us from photos, but it is not likely that she truly understands who we are or what will happen.  Please pray for her heart, mind, and spirit as she leaves all she knows and learns what it means to be part of a family.

Thank you friends.  We have appreciated your prayers and support through this journey.

TA is Here!!

That's right.  We are ON OUR WAY!!  Got the call from our agency this morning that our TA had arrived from CCCWA, and now we are waiting to hear the date of our consulate appointment.  After that we will book our flights and hotels and GO GET OUR CAYLIE JIUCHANG!!!