Almost 4 years ago, we felt led to begin the process of adopting a baby girl from China. Almost 4 years ago, one saturday, He gave us a name... SELAH....it was one of those moments I look back on as a day He spoke to us. It was so clear and there was no way that we were going to ignore this name or the fact that our daughter was going to be from China. He gave us this name through a song by Newsboys called the Orphan and when Aaron & I first heard it that saturday, we both knew without even speaking to each other that her name was to be Selah. We began the paperchase with MUCH excitement and JOY knowing that in 10-12 months (that was the wait time for Non-special needs referral at the time), we would hold a baby girl for the first time and she would be our daughter, Selah..... Well, much happened from that day in April 2006 until today, April 2010... 4 years later...
China began to slow down drastically in their referrals and the wait continued to increase and there just wasn't any sign that Selah was going to be a reality anytime soon.... We had many opportunities for other adoptions... many closed, but one particular adoption opportunity came to us as God's "grace".... we had the opportunity to adopt Anna Li Grace on 9/22/2008 from Taiwan. She was a miracle story, born with Hepatitis B, but miraculously healed by the time we picked her up.... what a wonderful, day that was to feel a part of God's promise come to fruition. Still, we knew that Selah was out there in China, so we kept waiting and cherishing our days with our boys and Anna. Early in 2010, I was pondering our life and how much God had blessed us with our children and marveling at how Anna came into our life, the Lord reminded me about Selah.... Much in the same way we felt in our hearts He spoke to us about Selah's name, He reminded me about "His Promise to us of Selah"... so I asked Him if there was something we should be doing and I felt like He just told me to keep the dream alive and to not get too busy with my family of 4 kids!.... As I began to ponder this, I felt that maybe He was leading us to adopt a baby from China's special needs list. At this point, we had not submitted a medical checklist with our agency so I asked Aaron about submitting a medical checklist... He was a bit surprised at first because he felt like our family was already FULL and we don't need to rush to add another baby.. I explained to him what I felt God had been saying to me about keeping the dream alive and that sunday, our church sermon was about keeping old dreams alive and praying for promise that we've long given up on... this message really spoke to Aaron's heart and he told me that we should submit a medical checklist. After much prayer and agonizing over what conditions to check, we checked cleft lip and palate, major and minor heart conditions, Hepatitis B, and club feet. We were told by our agency that we were about #200 on the list of families waiting for a waiting child match, so we figured it would be atleast one year before we would get a call for a referral. Somehow in my heart I felt like God would lead us to a baby with a heart condition....That was march 2010. Here we are in April... and 2 days ago, on 4/23/2010, we received an email from our agency with a possible match for us!!! The story is really long and it was a complete surprise to us but we have a REFERRAL!!!! Selah is actually now a REALITY! We saw her picture and she actually looks like Anna. She is only 9 months younger than Anna and is such a cutie pie. She has a condition that I will not mention yet until we have PA. I can't post pictures either... but as soon as we receive pre-approval from China, I will be able to post...
I can hardly believe that this is happening. ofcourse we had to scramble in Hawaii while on vacation to get the needed paperwork to send to China. It has been a crazy 2 days....
The road was LONG to get Selah.... I never would have imagined this is the way we were going to have her. never thought that Selah would end up with an older sister... and never imagined that the referral was going to come by email, while we were vacationing in Hawaii. God's ways are NOT our ways, that's for sure!
China began to slow down drastically in their referrals and the wait continued to increase and there just wasn't any sign that Selah was going to be a reality anytime soon.... We had many opportunities for other adoptions... many closed, but one particular adoption opportunity came to us as God's "grace".... we had the opportunity to adopt Anna Li Grace on 9/22/2008 from Taiwan. She was a miracle story, born with Hepatitis B, but miraculously healed by the time we picked her up.... what a wonderful, day that was to feel a part of God's promise come to fruition. Still, we knew that Selah was out there in China, so we kept waiting and cherishing our days with our boys and Anna. Early in 2010, I was pondering our life and how much God had blessed us with our children and marveling at how Anna came into our life, the Lord reminded me about Selah.... Much in the same way we felt in our hearts He spoke to us about Selah's name, He reminded me about "His Promise to us of Selah"... so I asked Him if there was something we should be doing and I felt like He just told me to keep the dream alive and to not get too busy with my family of 4 kids!.... As I began to ponder this, I felt that maybe He was leading us to adopt a baby from China's special needs list. At this point, we had not submitted a medical checklist with our agency so I asked Aaron about submitting a medical checklist... He was a bit surprised at first because he felt like our family was already FULL and we don't need to rush to add another baby.. I explained to him what I felt God had been saying to me about keeping the dream alive and that sunday, our church sermon was about keeping old dreams alive and praying for promise that we've long given up on... this message really spoke to Aaron's heart and he told me that we should submit a medical checklist. After much prayer and agonizing over what conditions to check, we checked cleft lip and palate, major and minor heart conditions, Hepatitis B, and club feet. We were told by our agency that we were about #200 on the list of families waiting for a waiting child match, so we figured it would be atleast one year before we would get a call for a referral. Somehow in my heart I felt like God would lead us to a baby with a heart condition....That was march 2010. Here we are in April... and 2 days ago, on 4/23/2010, we received an email from our agency with a possible match for us!!! The story is really long and it was a complete surprise to us but we have a REFERRAL!!!! Selah is actually now a REALITY! We saw her picture and she actually looks like Anna. She is only 9 months younger than Anna and is such a cutie pie. She has a condition that I will not mention yet until we have PA. I can't post pictures either... but as soon as we receive pre-approval from China, I will be able to post...
I can hardly believe that this is happening. ofcourse we had to scramble in Hawaii while on vacation to get the needed paperwork to send to China. It has been a crazy 2 days....
The road was LONG to get Selah.... I never would have imagined this is the way we were going to have her. never thought that Selah would end up with an older sister... and never imagined that the referral was going to come by email, while we were vacationing in Hawaii. God's ways are NOT our ways, that's for sure!
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With love, Heather & Andrew
Did you let your I797 expire?
love you!