Three Little Letters

After waiting 134 days since writing a Letter of Intent (LOI) to adopt Lia Faith, we were finally blessed with those three little letters that families adopting children from China know so well - LOA! October 24th, 2008. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas ... in Beijing!

Here's the story...

We had a travel meeting with Lifeline Children's Services today, so we decided to go a little early and have lunch in Birmingham. So we stopped an hour or so before our appointed time with Lifeline. While we waited for our lunch to arrive, Connie says "Do you think Karla has our LOA?" Now, if you're a participant in this waiting game, you know that Thursdays are usually the days that LOAs arrive and since we didn't get a call yesterday, I answered "Connie, you know Karla knows how much we're anticipating that. If she got it, I'm sure she would have called us. So, no, I don't think she has it."

Another conversation ensued about the wait. Conversations we have had numerous times, with each other, and separately by ourselves, alone with our thoughts. Questioning the process, wondering what had gone wrong, would it be next week since it wasn't this week, there's got to be something we can do, etc... This wouldn't be so difficult if we hadn't already committed to a particular child, whose beautiful face we have been staring at every day since mid-June. What we didn't know was that while we were having lunch, the overnight delivery service was pulled up to the door of Lifeline, unloading a document that would make our year! Karla received our LOA today and shared it with us as soon as we got to Lifeline. It was a great way to start the travel meeting.

The travel meeting consisted of 5 families, at various stages of waiting, and was scheduled many weeks ago. So, for those of you who believe in consequences, maybe you'd think "What a great turn of events." I choose, however, to believe that this is simply God's plan at work. Giving us time to wait and think about and pray about Lia Faith and then having the LOA show up for our signature at the very moment we're to arrive for this travel meeting. For the record, we've signed the LOA and given it back to Lifeline!!!!

In the course of the afternoon, we got to meet some awesome families who are sharing the same journey with us and who encourage us, simply by their presence and the reflection of God that we see in their actions and words relative to their own adoptions. We pray for each of these families and are so thankful that God introduced us to them at this time. We were also greatly blessed by the staff at Lifeline, Karla and Lauren, who lead a discussion of travel topics and bonding issues. We are so thankful we chose Lifeline because of their commitment to Jesus Christ and a biblical foundation for adoption.

Now, there's only one more approval we await from the Chinese - Travel Approval, or affectionately known as TA amongst the inhabitants of the world known as adoption. Hopefully, our TA will come in time for our travel to occur before the end of the year. Thus, the earlier comment about Christmas in Beijing. Please pray with us and for us that TA will arrive on schedule as well so that we may bring Lia Faith home to be with her family and to receive the love she so deserves and the medical attention that she needs! And please pray with us for the other families who wait at various stages of this process, that God would strengthen their resolve and their commitment to His plan of adoption, as he has ours, and that their letters of approval will come in due time.

Love,
Jerry, Connie, Austin, Lily Grace, and Lia Faith
Green, Party of Five