It's here!!!!!!!

Praise God, our SCL has arrived and we are going to CHI in the morning to sign it!

Still waiting, and waiting, and waiting.......

Sorry I haven't posted much in the past few weeks, but there hasn't been a whole lot to report on. We received our Pre-Approval to adopt Jacob almost six weeks ago now and still have not received our Seeking Confirmation Letter (SCL) from the CCCA. We have to sign that and return it to China before we can move forward. We know that everything is in God's control and it will come about in His timing. However, it has been difficult and a struggle not to become discouraged. But, just because we haven't gotten our SCL yet doesn't mean God hasn't been working and we have much to praise Him about!

We believe we now have or nearly have all the rest of the funds we need for travel and everything else. Praise Him! We also were able to share what God has done for us and our adoption story with our church family and friends last Monday evening. It was such a blessing for us to be able to share how much God as provided for us and shepherded us through not only this adoption journey, but Ellie's as well. We were also able to share our passion for adoption and orphan care. We hope this was an encouragement and a blessing to those who were there as well. We were asked to share our prayer requests for Jacob's adoption. We of course asked that God would be preparing Jacob's heart for coming into our family, and ours as well, so that it would be a smooth transition for him. We also asked prayer for the rest of the paperwork that was still to come, especially that we would hear something soon about our SCL. We have been praying that there weren't any issues, and that nothing was wrong.

Praise God for another answered prayer! Tina from our adoption agency called us the next day to let us know that they had determined what had happened. She had gone to an obscure part of the CCCA's private website for adoption agencies and found that they had rejected our adoption request because there was a typo for our dossier log in date. It had been listed as 2007 instead of 2009 and somehow our agency did not get contacted about the error. This is why we hadn't received our SCL. So if she hadn't gone to this part of the website she hardly ever goes to, we would have not known about the error till much later. We of course believe this was answered prayer and divine intervention, praise God! Tina called us back on Friday to let us know that she had sent the correction to the CCCA and they had acknowledged receiving it and working to process our SCL now. We should receive our SCL the first part of next week sometime. Tina said she would check with them again if we hadn't received it by Wednesday of next week. If we can get it by then, we should still receive our travel approval by the end of July and travel about mid August. To God be the Glory!

Blessings!
Ken, Trish, & Ellie

Meet Jacob Josiah Guo Shi Almond!

We got our preapproval from the CCCWA (China Centre for Children's Welfare and Adoption) so we can finally share Jacob's photos! Praise God! We should get our seeking confirmation letter from them in a few weeks and then travel in a couple of months. That would put us going to China in July sometime. The cool thing is that it might be possible that we would be traveling with some friends of ours who just got their preapproval!

Online News Article Link

Here is a link to the local on-line paper that printed an article on our adoption story from the garage sale @six flags this past Sat. http://eureka-wildwood.patch.com/articles/garage-sale-equals-child-adoption

We Are Matched!

We are so excited right now! Three years ago this month God led us to put our application in to Children’s Hope for our 2nd adoption from China, this time for a little boy from the special needs list. We had no idea how long the process would take this time. It has been a very challenging & emotional wait but we know that God’s timing is perfect. Our biggest challenge has been in the financial area. It seemed we would never make it to the amount we needed to complete the adoption. About a third of this amount has been paid along the way. Well, this month, God blessed us with about another third. This combined with previous garage sale & t-shirt sales brought us much closer to our goal, close enough to be officially placed on the special needs list, which we did earlier this month. We were also able to view a list of boys in our approved age range. It was overwhelming to see all of the boys that needed moms & dads and had a variety of health issues. We found 4 different boys that we wanted to get a medical opinion on before making any sort of decision. After speaking with our pediatrician on Thursday of that week we felt we could narrow it down to one of the boys. This boy happened to be the one Ellie initially had said “I want him!” Well we want them all, but we can only adopt one. We are very interested in the little guy Ellie loves. We were awaiting a small update on his health status before we finalized the decision. He had a few issues that we prayed remained minor. An email was sent by our adoption agency to try and get some updates. We knew our email might not get answered but we were trusting that God would answer us clearly about the decision. We needed to make a decision soon as other families were looking at his file as well. We decided to just trust God and go ahead and lock his file, knowing that whatever answers we received would probably not change our minds. We must trust God to lead us in this. A few days later we received the answers to our questions and God again confirmed this was the right direction as all the answers were very positive! We also recieved updated photos. We will share the photos and more details on little Jacob once we receive our pre-approval from the CCCA. And, once we do get officially approved by the CCCA we would travel in 4-6 months. Please keep us in your prayers.

In order to raise money for our adoption we have had many garage sales and had our final & 7th garage sale this month at 6 Flags again. The date of the sale was Sat March 26th and was scheduled to be 8 AM to 1 PM. Last year in just 4 hrs we raised $1000. We were hoping to do at least the same this year if not more. But, God is good, and even though the weather wasn't the greatest (it started snowing around Noon) causing there to be a lot less people this year, we still raised about $830 after our expenses! There was also a lady from one of the local news journals who stopped by our spot. She took our picture and asked us several questions about our adoption journey. We are praying that God will use this to help raise awareness about adoption and how big the need is for all the children who don't have parents.

We just can't thank all of our friends and family enough who prayed for us, helped us with the sale, and donated items. Please continue to keep us in your prayers. We are confident God will provide the rest of the funds we still need! We hope to be able to provide another update later this week and share Jacob's pictures!

Blessings, Ken, Trish & Ellie