SILENCE...

I wait for you, O LORD; you will answer, O Lord my God. - Psalm 38:15

We still wait..with no new information. The silence is unbearable at times, but we know our Father is not silent. He is at work. Our comfort and strength is found in knowing that we are waiting on the One who holds our daughter in His hand while at the same time holding us firmly in His hand as well.

I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning. - Psalm 130:5-6

Thank you for your prayers. Please continue to pray for our Abigail and for us.

We wait in hope for the LORD; he is our help and our shield. - Psalm 33:20

Tears of JOY...

This one of the 4 referral photos we received of our precious daughter.
Please Pray for her as you see her beautiful face.

I started to title this post after something we sent to our Family Coordinator on Thursday - "tears of joy on Tuesday and tears of another kind on Thursday." But I realized that might leave the impression of us being it great despair. Do not misunderstand, we are grieving and feel a little helpless as we wait in what seems a dark time. But Jesus is GOOD and He is Sovereign over all things! We have had a great sense of His peace - no doubt because of the many that are praying for us and our precious Abby. We need your prayers - our daughter desperately needs your prayers. Thank you for remembering to intercede for us.

For those that do not know, here is a recap of this emotional roller coaster of a week:

• Monday Oct. 12 we received RA from the CCAA and were told we would most likely travel to bring her home at the end of November - what great JOY we experienced!
• Wednesday Oct.14 the official LOA packet arrived. We signed it and FedExed it back to our agency for them to send back to China on Friday - what an exciting day!
• Thursday Oct. 15 our Family Coordinator(FC) called to tell us the very difficult news about the health of our daughter. We are so thankful for the staff of AWAA. Before hanging up, she prayed with us - for us and for Abigail. After hearing the horrific news, her prayer was such an encouragement. They truly care for us and our daughter.

Here is what we know:
About 3 weeks ago we contacted a third party organization called Ladybugs and Love from Above to request an orphanage call because we were still waiting for RA at that point. We mainly just wanted to see new photos and get new measurements. Well, the week after we requested this call the Moon Festival (which shuts down most things in China for about a week) occurred. We were contacted by them through email the Friday of that week to let us know the delay was because of the festival. Then, Monday the CCAA was back up and running - and our RA arrived. When our FC called on Thursday we were overwhelmed to say the least. Ladybugs and Love from Above had called our agency when they found out about our daughter's illness. She has been diagnosed with spinal acute myelitis. We found a very helpful explanation on the website of Children's Hospital of Boston. It is very serious - currently she is bedridden - unable to walk and without bladder/bowel control. We don't have any details as to when she contracted it, how long she has had it, or the treatment she is being given. At this point our FC has told us that the CCAA and the orphanage will have to decide if it is still in her best interest to be adopted. It could be another 1-2 weeks before we hear from China.

Please PRAY for these:

• healing of her body
• for her to receive good treatment
• for the CCAA and the orphanage to allow the adoption to proceed(we want her to know that she has a family that is waiting for her)
• that she would not be scared...grace and peace for her painful state
• peace for us as we wait to receive more details (it's very hard to think of her in such pain without her family there to comfort her)
• that we will receive an update from the orphanage

We are so very thankful for Ladybugs and Love from Above and America World Adoption Association! We cannot say enough word of praise about them! We are blessed to be on this journey with both of these organizations. We are also very blessed to have so many wonderful friends and family praying for us and our daughter. Your words of prayer and encouragement have meant more than you may ever know.
A couple of final thoughts:

1) Monte & I do NOT want anyone in the process of adoption or considering adoption to be discouraged. Though this pain we are currently experiencing is not what we expected, we would do it all over again for the life of a child and for what it has meant in our walk with Jesus. We have known Him like never before throughout this journey. Last night, at our revival service, Monte voiced that through this Jesus is about conforming us to His image and that is not without pain. Our faith muscle is being strengthened and we are growing in His love...and all because of a little girl that we call Abigail.

2) We do NOT want anyone to think that our adoption of a child that may not ever recover is some noble or honorable act that we feel obligated to. We believe Pan Zi He has been our Abigail long before we ever saw her face in May. The Christmas of 2006 we were burdened that there was a daughter waiting for us in a Chinese orphanage. There is no doubt that she was that daughter. Much more noble and honorable things have been done by men and women greater than us. We are simply trying to bring our daughter home.

We have tears of JOY at the very thought of our precious daughter.
We thank you for your prayers and ask that you continue praying.

RA Call TODAY...Here She is!

How sweet it is to finally be able to share her face with you!!! This is the picture that the LORD first used to capture our hearts.
If you look at our timeline on the left side of the page you will notice that we sent our dossier (big packet of info about us) to China (which is known as DTC) on October 12, 2007. And now - TODAY - October 12, 2009 we have that long-awaited phone call telling us that we have Referral Acceptance (RA)!
What a joy it is to share the LORD's answer to our prayers - though it may not have been in the timing of our choosing or even in the way in which we thought at the beginning of this journey - He is GOOD! She has a family and we have a daughter all because of His faithfulness. His adoption of us is all the more real on this day. He seeks out His sons and daughters and He waits for them with His everlasting love.
More to come...
Missy

We've Joined a Club...a Swapping Club

You may already be in the know of the plethora of swapping clubs available out there, but we recently learned of this one - Swap a DVD. We have been cleaning out our dvd collection, and this seems like a great way to get rid of the ones we don't want anymore and get some we'd like to have. There are so many movies that we own that we've decided are just not what we want in our home, and many others that we'd like to have. Rather than go out and buying everything that we want and trashing what we don't, we started looking for other options.

Here's how it has worked for us so far. We posted 17 or so movies on Thursday night. We immediately had 6 requests for 6 different movies because other members had placed them hold for when they became available. Our responsibility is to print out the label, wrap or package the dvd, and then mail it off at our expense (which was $1.90 each). We will receive a credit for each movie we sent out when they are received by the other members - which means we can request movies ourselves. We also got one free credit just for posting our first 10 movies. We have a request out for a movie with that free credit right now. Most of the movies require 1 credit to request - the credits required match the number of discs of the particular requested dvd. We created a wish list of movies we'd like to have. The wish list helps to request movies as they become available. Did I mention that this is all FREE??? They do tell you that at sometime in the future they may have to charge a $10-$20 annual fee for maintaining the site, but will notify all members with the option to leave. No credit card is required to join, so there's no fear of getting charged something without your knowledge of it. We're trying it out and thought others might want to also! Oh, and they have a book swap and a cd swap as well. We're definitely checking those out too!

Next post we'll share an update on our waiting to be united with Abigail.