We began our journey to Esther with Children's House International, a wonderful adoption agency. We love the staff of C.H.I. They clearly love these children and treat each one as if they were the only orphan in existence. Each adoptive family receives a poem especially written about their child once they are officially matched to their forever family. Just amazing people.
We are very familiar with C.H.I. and all the paper chasing because we lived through the process with our close family friends the H's for the adoption of their daughter from China. I could hardly stand the wait for their little "potato" and to not be able to go to with them to China was a killer. But now we wait for our own little girl! (Still a killer) But with all the help of our friends it has been very smooth.
Louisa Mei was Esther's list name on List 17 that came to C.H.I. in February 2007. Esther joins our family of four, momma, daddy, big sister (21) and big sister(7). Esther is also immediately an Aunt to our baby granddaughter (2).
Our journey has been QUICK, it happened like this.. On Christmas day Dear Husband and I were discussing what God's will for our family's future might be and how we were open to whatever He may have us do. On December 26th, God told me the plan, adopt an older girl from China. That evening I shared with DH what God had said and asked him to pray with me concerning this. December 27th, (early in the a.m.) God told DH the plan was correct and "we needed to begin immediately". We know now the urgency was because of the new, more stringent regulations for adoptive parents to China beginning May 1, 2007. I have a medical condition which probably would exclude us.
We needed to get all our paperwork (it is called a dossier) completed and "logged in" in China before the May 1st deadline. DH phoned me that morning from work and said, "Get the paperwork started we have a daughter in China to go get". I was stunned, this was less than 48 hours from our "What does God have in mind for our family" discussion. So I quickly got our 7 yo dressed and off to daddy's office to tell her the great news that she was getting a mei mei (little sister) from China. She has been asking us to adopt from China ever since last March when we took a family vacation to Beijing and Shanghai. She likes to say she was the first to know that we should adopt. We arrived at daddy's office and we told her, "We have a surprise for you", she said, "Where is it?, we said," In China!"
I started the paperwork with C.H.I. on that morning, December 27th. We had actually planned another trip to China in July to volunteer at an orphanage in Beijing. We had to cancel this volunteer trip in order to be able to go to get Esther this summer. We will need to be in China a total of 2 weeks, 1 week in Changsha, Esther's Provincial Capital and 1 week in Guangzhou where the American Consulate is located to complete the paperwork required. So here we are paper chasing for our wonderful Esther!!
