The Two Longest Days (Days 16 & 17)

Well, this is our final blog post from China.  Today was a great day, but also at times seemed a long and slow day of waiting, waiting, waiting.  It seems that every day since Gotcha Day is really just a day of waiting to go home!  We've titled this blog post to include tomorrow too, because we also know it will be a long, slow day and we won't be able to blog because of travel.

Wakeup was awesome as Alia woke up smiling, laughing, and giggling...such a sweet start to the day.  Breakfast was normal but also not.  Alia had a good thirty minute melt down before and after breakfast.  Did we mention the mid-breakfast melt down?  After such a peaceable day yesterday the melt downs were discouraging after a great start.  Part of the reason for the meltdowns are some diet changes we are trying with Alia.  

Ever since her first few days of the diarrhea plague, Ali has been severely constipated.  We have tried lots of things with varying success, but think she needs a more liquid and fruit diet until we get home.  Our pediatrician has been awesome in encouraging us through this, but it is no fun having a new, sick child overseas.  We are glad that Alia is eating and drinking, but we hate seeing her so bloated and at times in so much pain and discomfort.  Despite her constipation she still likes McD's French fries, haha! Did you know that McD's delivers in China?

One of the challenges that we've seen newly adoptive parents experience is breaking the bad "parenting" habits set by the orphanages or foster care families.  It's not the workers or kids' faults in some ways, they simply had a high ratio of kids to adults.  Every kid's challenges are different, but we foresee one of our challenges being her meltdowns.  We are very familiar with the melt downs of two and three year olds, but we think Ali's caregivers caved into hers with food and outside play time.  So if we don't respond the same way?  Long melt downs with spitting, biting, and collapsing on the ground screaming.  The joys of parenthood, haha.  This too shall pass.

After the morning drama. We took Alia on a walk in the hotel garden but got rained out rather quickly.  We relocated into an indoor kiddie room where we played with blocks again.  Because of her arms and back, Alia works very hard to do even simple tasks...but she is so determined.  Block by block she assembled another "castle."  In order to reach a block, she slowly squats, holds the position, and slowly grasps the block.  She does the same in order to place the block and repeated this about twenty times.  She is going to have some serious leg and abominable muscles.  Her determination paid off and she finished, but then collapsed into Brittney's arms, drenched with sweat.

We then headed back out to pickup some souvenirs we had ordered the previous day and took an early nap.  After nap time we said goodbye to one of the three remaining families.  They headed out today via a four hour van ride to Hong Kong for a one night stay before their departure tomorrow.

After their departure, we were the last two families awaited our children's visas, and thankfully the Lord provided them on time and with no errors, praise God!  Here is our priceless paperwork and the infamous "do not open this no matter what" brown folder of Alia's citizenship paperwork that we courier into our first port of entry.

We had a great final dinner with our last set of adoption travel friends.  The kids ate well and we had a fun time together, helping speed up this day of waiting.  Jonathan was tempted to eat some duck (for practice when he gets home, word on the street is that our home ducks have made our front porch their bathroom...their days maybe numbered), but restrained himself.  Notice Brittney's skilled use of chop sticks and Jonathan's spearing technique...to each their own, lol.

We made an effort for an intentional early bedtime since we have to wakeup around 4am for a 5:40am departure for the airport.  We should leave Guangzhou by about 8:30am and arrive in Beijing three hours later.  We'll have a four hour layover before boarding our FOURTEEN hour flight to Chicago.  Somehow Jonathan doesn't think he'll get to watch five movies on the way home too, haha.  After our long flight to Chicago, we'll have a three hour layover as we process through customs and immigration and board our final short one and half hour flight to Louisville.  By the time we make it home, we will have been traveling for close to 31 hours!  If you see a man walking through an airport with pink luggage, we'll give your three guesses who it is...packed & ready to go!

We do appreciate the prayers as we head home.  This long day of travel is going to be difficult in many ways.  We are praying for no major meltdowns at 30,000 feet in an enclosed cabin, lol.

Thank you!  Thank you to all who have followed us on this journey.  We know there have been literally hundreds of you reading these posts and praying for us day by day.  Your encouragement and support has meant so much to us during these past 16 months leading up to Alia's adoption, and especially during these past seventeen days.  Alia is a true gift and "bundle of Joy" from God and we look forward to sharing you with her in person in the days ahead!

May we keep sharing Christ's adoptive love in words, actions, and giving toward the adoption of the 150+ million orphans worldwide.  If you would like any information about our awesome adoption agency, American World Adoption Association, please let us know! We have been blessed to work with them through the entire process and highly recommend them should The Lord ever lay adoption on your heart. Our prayer through this entire process was for God to use us to provide a loving forever family to an orphan but to also come alongside other families and encourage them if God has adoption in His plans for them as well! So, please ask questions, come visit, and let us know if we can ever help! Thank you again for the blessings you have each been! We love you and will be in touch, keeping you up to date with how our journey of faith, hope and love (no longer pending) is going!

"Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world." James 1:27

Consulate Appointment Day! (Day 15)

It's here!  Our long awaited consulate appointment day is here!  Today we had an earlier start for both breakfast and departure as our three remaining families headed to the US consulate for our visa application appointment.  Security was so tight that we could not wear our watches or bring our cameras to the consulate. We were only permitted to bring our passports and a little food and drink for Ali.  Alia did great!  We hung out for an hour in an office building and coffee shop while our group's two other families went into the consulate (they had an earlier appointment than ours).  We have found that a constant flow of sweetened cereal keeps Ali peaceable, haha!

Once it was our turn, we headed in through security, right between two families from Texas...so of course they knew we were safe and trustworthy!  It was fun to meet some families while we waited inside the consulate.  We met a man adopting his 9th child (5 adopted, 4 biological).  His son was literally a few days from "aging out" and not ever being allowed to be adopted (China doesn't allow kids 14 and older to be adopted).  We met a lady traveling on her own who had already adopted two seven year old twins from Africa and was now adopting a seven year old from China with serious medical issues.  We also met a family adopting two girls simultaneously as their first children.  How amazing is adoptive love!?!

We did a group oath concerning our written visa applications being accurate and received some brief instructions.  One by one our families proceeded forward to verify our child's medical exam records and to submit fingerprints to verify our application.  The whole process was five minutes of conversation and 55 minutes of waiting...easy peasey!  Plus they had a nice children's play area that Ali loved.  Unfortunately we were not allowed to bring our phones or cameras with us, so we have no fun morning photos to share :(

Tomorrow our guide will pick up Alia's passport with US visa, her Hague adoption certificate, and her immigration papers that make her an official US citizen when we land in Chicago!  We're praying for no visa problems or delays.  We're thankful for Ali's US citizenship but ultimately praying and raising her to become a citizen of the Kingdom of God!

Alia does great with a set nap time and today she passed out on Jonathan's lap in the hotel room.  She was tired and was easily transferred to her crib so Jonathan could make a Chinese food run.  Fried noodles and vegetable spring rolls reminded Brittney of "American Chinese food" but the fried won tons had shrimp inside...strange.

We had a pretty easy afternoon, journeying to a nearby mall of sorts to get a few last souvenirs.  It seems hard to make the time go by with a little one when you've been ready for days to come home. Here is a few pics of our friends from the next door Dong Fang shopping mall..."chops" are a big favorite as a stone stamp with your family name in Mandarin and English...the man in the pic did the engraving.

We finished the day with a final hallway pizza party, serviced by Papa John's.  The pizza was great again and we final three families enjoyed the time together.  Our party doubled as a birthday celebration as a lady in our group shared her mango birthday cake with us.  It was a thin layer of cake, topped by a thick layer similar to cheese cake with fresh fruit on top.  Delicious!

Alia especially enjoyed our last hallway party and seemed interested in watching a cartoon movie with the other kids...this was the first time she showed much interest in a movie.  We are hoping to get her more interested in movies before our long plan flight home!  

The best part was when one of the newly adopted girls started grabbing Alia's hand to run up and down the hallway.  We were all a little concerned for Ali as her hands are more delicate and she isn't as fast as the other kids.  A few of the other girls joined in to help and they had a blast!  The four girls were so cute together and Alia absolutely loved her play friends!  Her giggles and laughs made our day and were a fun way to finish the evening.  We had a good bath time and Alia went to bed without any crying fits for the first time, praise the Lord!

These last few days in China seem the hardest because we are all struggling to make time pass and get home quickly.  Please pray that everyone's visas come through well and that we all stay healthy during our last full day in China tomorrow!

Staring & Caring (every day!)

Ever since arriving in China we have been stared at. Every day.  It does get old.  Quick.  In Beijing the stares were not so bad because there is more of a Western presence.  But in Guiyang and Guangzhou staring is out of control.  

Here are a few reasons we are being stared at....

1) We look different.  China is not very diverse, especially in more rural provinces.  Different people get stared at here, a lot.  We get requests for photos with people and have begun to understand the burden that many celebrities and athletes feel back home.  Sometimes it is much nice to slip by unoticed.

2) We have lots of kids.  Even before our adoptions, our group of eight families had 11 kids.  With adopted kids, we had 19 kids and so we drew attention.  China has a rule that restricts most of its population to only having one child.  A few exceptions are allowed to permit a second child.  A few families have the financial means to pay the hefty fine that permits them to have a second child.  We had a family with five kids and a family with four kids and a family with three kids and a family with two kids traveling around in our group.  Get the picture?  Lots of fun and lots of stares!

3) We have Chinese born kids.  Even though our children will be Americans in a few days, they were made in China and thus look different than us.  A mixed family is very different in China so many Chinese people did not know how to process what they are seeing in us.

4) We have some children with very visible special needs.  All of our children have unseen emotional, mental, and social needs from being orphans, but some of our children are physically different in noticeable ways.  Chinese people are not used to this.  Most people with physical differences are abandoned to die alone or in orphanages, or are secluded from others in orphanages or nursing homes.  The few disabled people that are seen in public were usually disabled at a later age and forced to become street beggars.

These (along with Jonathan's craziness), are the reasons we were stared at.  Here are the kinds of stares we received...

1) Gawking stares.  There were many people who were just curious.  We were obviously a curious and unusual sight.  We got many of the double takes that one might expect.  A brief double take here and there was tolerable and not too big of a deal.

2) Disapproving stares.  We have received verbal "tsk tsks" of disapproval, wagging fingers, and shaking heads.  Obvious racism and nationalism against foreigners.  Very sad, but expected from those living in a propaganda saturated country.  Many of these people have no clue that there are tens of millions of orphans living in their country (compared to 150,000-250,000 in the US).

3) Continued, awkward stares.  Not just double takes, but blatant stares.  Obviously talking about us while directly in front of us.  We know this is a different culture but there should be at least some common understanding of etiquette and courtesy.  Some of them made obvious gestures about kid's cleft palates and Alia's arms.  Some people would come and touch our kids and grab Alia's arms to look at them. We succeeded at remaining polite, but Brittney did grow a pair of pretty cool set of Momma claws too...haha!

4) Caring stares.  These were the best.  You could see it in their eyes.  You could hear it in their words, even if we didn't know what was being said.  We received thumbs up signs, humongous smiles, and encouraging looks.  Several English speaking Chinese people would come and tell us how wonderful it was for us to be adopting these children.  Several remarked how amazing and inspiring our lives and actions were to them.  They knew the plight of the tens of millions of orphans in their country and they appreciated the numerically small but relationally significant differences we were making.  We were so thankful for these caring stares.

American stares?  Will we get them?  Yes.  No doubt.  Maybe not as many, but probably for the same reasons. 

We know there will be the naturally curious.  Alia is our "jackpot baby" (1 in 200,000 have special arms like hers), so we acknowledge some people will notice that her arms and that her skin, eyes, face, and hair is different than they might associate with our family.  But family is deeper than blood.  Our God made Ali just the way He purposed, and He made her to become our daughter.  People will not understand how blessed we are by our beautiful girl.

We know Alia will be stared at for her physical beauty.  She, like Sophia and Lydia, is a beautiful girl with an amazing smile and laugh.  We hope and pray that her inner beauty shines brighter than her outward beauty and that one day Sophia, Lydia, and Alia are all filled with the inward beauty of God's Spirit within them.

We know there will be racist stares.  There is no justification for these stares, but we know the root of racism lies only in the hearts of those who have not encountered Christ's adoptive love.  Instead of being angered by and irritated by their looks, words, or actions, we will love them. We will pity their lostness and want to have compassionate words and actions ready so that they might come to know Christ's love.  Christ and His love is the key to undermining racism.

We know we will be caught off guard in the future and that sometimes our first thoughts and reactions might be more defensive than helpful.  We might even blurt out a witty and spiteful comments...our flesh wants to, but our spirit does not.  We don't want our daughters to be hurt by the stares and comments.  They are not blind or deaf, they will notice and hear.  We want to protect them, but more than anything we want to prepare them.  Please pray for us.  It is a new world of stares that we are entering into...we want to respond with grace and love.

Caring stares.  We look forward to these.  We know we will get them in the US.  People will be lovingly concerned for our daughter's health.  They will be interested in hearing how the Lord knit our hearts with hers and made us a family together.  Many will ask and be moved towards deeper prayers, sacrifice, and action for orphans around the world.  We love those who stare and care.

Our conclusion?  It is not fun being stared at...all the time...as we are in China.  But you know what?  As Christians we should expect and want to be stared at. Our lives should look different.  At times it will be annoying and we will feel judged and looked down upon.  May the stares of the world be upon us, so that they see the love of Christ within us!

To our family and friends...we welcome questions and for you to look at Alia's uniqueness because we know it will be in love! You all have been so loving on this journey and have already accepted Alia as our daughter! So feel free to let us help you understand how special God made her! She is quite the joy! We look forward to you meeting Alia Joy in person and seeing the miracle God created right before your eyes! We pray you are in awe of His craftiness in her and in each of us! 

A Day of Goodbyes (Day 14)

Our gracious guide made a late night trip for some Chinese medicine to help Alia go to the bathroom.  Just as Ali began showing signs of progress in recovering from her constipation, Brittney fell sick with a 24 hour stomach bug.  Thankfully it wasn't severe, but it still wasn't a fun day for Brittney.  It seems that over 80% of our group has been sick at some point during our trip...future travelers be warned, come prepared! 

Here is one of Alia's many devious grins and another amazing flower display at the hotel...it smells as good as it looks!

We intentionally had both a breakfast and dinner date with our Florida friends whom we began our journey with two weeks ago in Chicago.  They leave early tomorrow, two days before us, because their son is younger than two.  We will greatly miss them and we have grown close through the thick and thin of adoption.

After breakfast, our group took the much awaited group photo on the stairs.  This photo is a tradition with our agency and it was hard to believe that it was our turn to pose with our newly adopted children!  We have three families headed to Hong Kong this afternoon and two families headed to Beijing in the early morning.  These seven other families have been so gracious, helpful, and comforting during these two weeks.  It has been a joy to get to know them and we are excited to continue to follow their adoption journey in the months and years ahead.

After photos on the steps, the non-sick crew headed on a final field trip to the Chen Family Academy.  This place is a type of family sponsored gathering point, that the relatives contributed together to build.  It became a schoolhouse and today is a museum that demonstrates the arts (painting, silk art, bone carving art, sculpture, bonsai, fans, and calligraphy) while sharing the history of China, Guangzhou, and the Chen family.

The sad part is that this location is also synonymous with a "temple" as a place not of Buddhist worship, but of ancestor worship.  Several items and locations were dedicated towards worshipping their ancestors with sacrifices, prayers, and consultation of the dead.  Most people within China, even government raised atheists, have ancestor worship and spirit worship (animism) practices despite claims to practicing no religion at all.  I am reminded of biblical guidance to honor our father and mother (Ephesians 6:1-3) but how Satan has twisted that into worship practices of one's relatives.  In the biblical times, Christians were told to honor and pray for their leaders, including the Roman emperor, but that often crossed the line into emperor worship as well (1 Peter 2:13-25).  It's easy and important to point out and be aware of other cultures straying from God, but what false gods do we worship in America?  Nationalism.  Our bellies.  Our vanity.  Entertainment.  Sports.  Materialism.  Narcissism.  May we turn from our self-worship to a deeper and more life-saturated worship of a God.

As we said our goodbyes to our departing families, we grabbed another Chinese dinner of dumplings and some sweet and sour pork that was actually really close to our Americanized Chinese food, yum!  We also had a sweet visit from one of our guides, Delia, who had started the journey with us in Beijing also.  She generously brought a gift necklace to Brittney and a shirt to Alia.  This was a special blessing to Brittney and truly left her in awe of the kind gesture. She also was very interested in keeping in touch and seeing pictures of our girls as they grow. We tried facetiming Sophia and Lydia so she could meet them but had no luck. Delia was really sad!  We will miss our precious Chinese guides.  They have been so helpful and loving through this process. They love seeing families provide a loving home to these orphans! Will you lift them to the Lord for salvation?  One guide remarked today, saying "I wish I had religious belief."  Jonathan took the opportunity to share the Good News, but unfortunately the guide only seemed to listen out of politeness.  May the Lord stir their hearts to repent and believe in the true and living God of the universe! Our main guide Han recounted how he remembers storytellers (like the sculpture below) coming into his village to share stories (before his village had electricity, Han is just 37)...may there be many Christians to come into and travel throughout China to tell the greatest story ever told!

Although we've been counting down the days, and still are, today was a sad day as out of our group of 8 families, only 3 are remaining.  May time go by quickly these next few days so that we can reunite with our beloved families back home also!

A Day of Waiting and Exploring (Day 13)

By now we have mastered the art of hotel exploration and game playing.  One of Alia's favorite things is to sit in the large arm chair by herself, eating or taking a bottle.  She also loves to sit in the office/desk chair and spin around and around.  Our hotel here in Guangzhou has something we've never experienced before, a remote control curtain over a full size window into the bathroom.  Alia gets a kick out of playing peek a boo with us through this window.  She also loves playing with stickers off newly bought items.  Low maintenance entertainment, haha.  We've actually tried showing her some kids videos in preparation for our long plane flight, but TV and movies don't seem to keep her attention, it's a bit different in the US!

Our schedule today was virtually empty, so we created our own fun by heading out with the other two families of older adopted children (>2years old) to explore a local park.  It was only a ten minute walk, but as we crossed one eight-lane street (a small one by Chinese city standards, thus no below or above ground crosswalk), half of our group got stuck in a tight spot.  It was a little uncomfortable with traffic racing by that quickly, but we made it!  The next time we crossed that street, we ran across!

The park is absolutely beautiful.  We've been to a lot of US parks, but Chinese landscaping and maintenance is incredible.  Maybe because most of their people live in high rises (no lawn mowing!), they make their few green spaces extraordinary.  We started with pictures by a koi pond and then wandered past a group of Tai Chi ladies.  Thankfully, one of our group members smartly took a photo of the park map as a reference and we followed it in wandering through paths and bridges around a gorgeous lake.  A nice man saw how hot we were and gave Jonathan a fan to use on Ali.  We were looking for a playground but ended up stopping, resting, and playing in a nice shaded area.  We attracted a lot of attention from the locals, but had fun as a group and even discovered a nice mini amusement park complete with mini roller coasters.

On our way back to the hotel we did a little shopping, replacing our worn out and torn luggage with some nice, new pink suitcases (poor Jonathan).  Alia loved picking stickers off of them and rolling them around in our room!

While our three families wandered the park, the other five families had their ever-important US consulate appointment.  This is the appointment in which you formally apply for your child's US visa and so that when you land at your first point of entry, your child becomes an American citizen.  Well, one of these five families still had not received their new child's passport from their province.  No passport = no visa.  Despite multiple attempts to get their child's passport, they had been told it was lost in the mail.  They were then told by the US consulate that they would have to leave the consulate empty handed and reschedule their plane flights until they had a passport for their child.  They seemed to go throughout the same roller coaster of emotions as we did when we received the news of our rescheduled gotcha day.  But you know what happened?  As they were leaving the US consulate, their "lost" passport was found and delivered!  Praise the Lord for His perfect delivery and timing!

Our afternoon agenda included a one hour waiting period when we were supposed to remain in our room awaiting a phone call.  Since Alia is older than two, her blood was drawn on Saturday and we were waiting today (Monday) to find out if she had been exposed to Tuberculosis during her life.  If she tested positive we were going to receive a phone call and then promptly head to the hospital for X-rays, testing, and possible delays in travel.  But guess what?  No phone call!  No news is good news!

After this waiting game, Jonathan took Ali on a hotel exploration game so momma could get ready for a night on the town.  Alia has an independent streak, like her sisters, and it showed up as she explored.  She didn't want to be held, but followed daddy pretty faithfully through the whole hotel.  We had special fun in an outside garden and on a small playset, she loves water and slides!  We also managed for Alia to get her first goose egg by slipping and falling on some tile.  Her arms don't brace her falls too well and she had a good smack on the forehead...good thing she is hard headed!

We finished the evening with a group excursion on the Pearl River, China's third longest river (behind the Yangtze and Yellow rivers), right through the heart of Guangzhou.  For less than $40 per person we had an awesome 2.5 hour long river cruise complete with buffet and entertainment.  We enjoyed the company, food and sights!  Ali really seemed to love the cruise and was especially focused on the lady who juggled, clowned, and made animal balloons.

Another fun day in the books and one day closer to going home to our other two sweet girls! We miss them so very much and cannot thank enough the precious people caring for them while we are away!!!