Last Journal Entry for Lilly 12/31/2005

Precious Lilly,
Today is an extra special day in that it is the last day of 2005. 2005 is the year that you were born in our hearts and have become the joy that lives there even though we have never seen your face or heard your voice. 2006 will be the year that we do see you face to face, that we hold you in our arms, that we press kisses on your soft cheek, that we hear you giggle and laugh, that we see you smile for the first time, that we see delight and joy reflected in your eyes, that we sing songs to you, that we read stories to you, that we craddle you in our arms and rock you gently to sleep. 2006 will be a year of celebration and blessings and joy. It will be the year that we will be deeply and profoundly and forever changed by this incredible gift from God....you...our precious Lilly Ann. We will become the "Mama" & "Baba" that you have longed for. You will become the daughter that we have passionately longed for. Together we will be a forever family and Together we will be better than we could ever be apart from each other.Thank you Lilly Ann for allowing us the privilege of having you in our lives.
We love you Lilly and we pray that God will watch over you and keep you and make His face to shine upon you until we meet.
Mommy & Daddy December 31, 2005

Dossier gone to China!!!

Wohooo!!! Our dossier went to China on December 23, 2005! We are thrilled and are now just waiting on our LID (log in date) which is the date that the China Center Adoption Agency officially receives our dossier. It is now in China and being translated. It will then be hand carried by our agency, Great Wall China Adoption, to the CCAA. Due to all the changes at the CCAA, we are hoping that we will receive referral by early fall and travel within 6-8 weeks after that. It seems like "forever" at this point but we know that the time will pass...hopefully quickly! We will make the most of our time by finding a pediatrician, checking out fun places to take Lilly, decorating her room and planning for our trip to China.
We can't begin to tell you how blessed we are in adding Lilly Ann to our family. It can only be explained as a gift from God. It is not "logical" to be so crazy in love with this precious little girl that we know absolutely nothing about. God has placed her in our hearts and we love her in the same way that we love the children that God has given us already. We take this blessing as a great responsiblity as well. We were not Christians when our children were little and so we embark on the wonderful newness of raising a little one in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. We can't change the fact that we did not know the Lord as our personal Lord and Savior sooner in life but we can rejoice that we do now have that wonderful relationship with Him and that we will raise our precious daughter in His strength and with His wisdom. We know too that she is His child first and foremost and that He had planned from before time began that we would be her adoptive parents. Wow! That is so amazing.
So, we rejoice in this BIG step towards bringing Lilly home to her forever family. For those of you who would like to, we would ask you to pray for Lilly and for us as we prepare to become her "Mama" & "Baba". When we meet her somewhere in China on "Celebration Day" you will all have been part of this joyous time and we are so very grateful.
All for now! Will post when we get a log in date and as the nursery progresses!
Blessings & Joy,
Peggy & Bob

No News Yet!

Hi All!
I know that I have not posted in a while....my apologies. We are, quite honestly, frustrated at this point and I just kept telling myself that I would post again once we got our 171 from Memphis. Well, it has been 10 weeks and there is still no sign of it! UGH!!!! We can't do another thing until we get that so we are stuck in limbo at this point. There is also frustrating news from China....the time from log in of dossier to referral is now 10-12 months versus 6 to 7 months. After referral it will be another 6-8 weeks before we travel. At this point we will count it a blessing if we have Lilly home for Christmas 2006. We know that God is in control even when it does not feel like it to us but the wait is hard anyway. Guess that is one of the faith lessons that we will learn in this process...the "patience" word....sigh. All for now until everyone hears the shout of joy when we finally get the 171. I bet Lilly will even hear it wherever she is in China! Blessings to you all and a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Waiting for our precious daughter! 

Documents to Great Wall

Just wanted to update and let everyone know that we have sent the bulk of our duly notarized documents to Great Wall China. It was pretty exciting to send off our first FedEx package to them. They will start the County and State notorization process and then the US and Chinese authentication process. Almost all of the documents will have to go through that process. We are so glad that Great Wall China offers a plan where they take care of all of that paperchasing for us. It is a bit overwhelming to get it all together and notarized as it is....I can't imagine doing all the rest of it! It has only been one week since we sent our application to Immigration and Naturalization Services but it seems like forever. This waiting thing is the pits.....BUT our precious daughter is SO very much worth it all! Will update again when there is more progress! Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers but more than anything, please keep our sweet daughter in your prayers until we can get there and bring her home!
Blessings to you all!
Peggy & Bob

The First Big Steps to China

Welcome All! We have taken our first big steps in our journey to our precious daughter who is waiting for us in China. We completed our home study yesterday and filed our first form with the Immigration and Naturalization service yesterday as well. Now we must wait for the fingerprinting appointment. We will have to travel to Nashville for that and we hope that it will happen within 3 weeks. We will have our written home study to take with us and submit by then. Once that is done we will begin the wait for the coveted I-171H form from the INS. Meanwhile we will continue to gather a great multitude of documents and get them notarized appropriately. Once we have all of those documents and the I171-H we will submit all of that to our agency, Great Wall China Adoption (GWCA). They will then review the documents again and then it will all be sent to China for translation and submission. We will be waiting for our DTC (dossier to China) date and then our LID (log in date). From that point it takes about 6 months to get referral/matching from China. We will then travel to China within 4-6weeks. WOHOO!!!
We hope that our Dossier will be sent to China before Nov. 1, 2005. That is rather optimistic but we can hope! That would have us traveling early summer of 2006. Right now the wait sounds interminable to us BUT we are trusting the Lord and His timing in all this! We will update as able and if anyone has any questions we will do our best to help!
Blessings,
Peggy & Bob