To My Dear Children

To My Dear Children,

Before we met, I wanted you...
Before I found you, I loved you...
Before I touched your face, I would die for you...
This is the mircle of love.

Love Mom

5 weeks today

We received our referral for Lydia 5 weeks ago today. It seems much longer than that since we have been praying for her and loving her in our heart for 20 months. Since our first referral pictures, we have been blessed to received two new sets of pictures of her. The U.S. State Dept. came our with an announcement regarding the lack of new written agreement between the U.S. and Vietnam. This agreement is necessary to continue our adoption or to have our initial referral to become "official" by Sept. 1. This was not a new revelation but it was just another reminder of how precarious the situation is. A dear friend, whom I haven't talked to in too long called and gave me a great quote (God knew I would need this in the hours after the announcement). The quoit follows:

"DON'T DOUBT IN THE DARK WHAT GOD HAS REVELED IN THE LIGHT"

This time of uncertain waiting seems a little dark but we choose to wait in faith of the promise He gave to us on June 16, named Lydia.

Duel meet champs...again

This is a picture of our family's fine swimmers. Our swim club was 8-0 for the second year in a row (I won't mention that last weekend, our club lost in our interclub event to our biggest rival).

Veitnam update

We received an update from our agency with detailed from the trip to Vietnam that the Pres. of our agency made on behalf of the Joint Council.The following is an excerpt from her letter:

From John’s meetings with the Vietnamese authorities and the DIA (Dept. on International Adoption) we now understand that in order for files received prior to July 1, 2008 to be grandfathered in, there must be an interim agreement signed between the two countries permitting this process. Rather than a simple request by the Department of State, we will need a signed agreement in order for this process to be followed. No decision has been made regarding the grandfathering of files received prior to July 1, 2008, as an interim agreement is still in progress.

What will happen regarding the implementation of a new agreement by September 1st (or shortly thereafter) as well as the grandfathering of files received prior to July 1, 2008 is still uncertain.


Please continue to pray:
*that the Us and Vietnam can come to a new agreement on adoption and get it written down and signed by Sept.1

*that an agreement can be written and signed by Sept.1 grandfathering all dossiers (like ours) so we can bring home our children that we have been referred.

Yesterday, we also received 3 new pictures of Lydia. That way so exciting! I wish I could put them on the Blog.

Waiting

Once our eyes are opened, we can't pretend we don't know what to do. God who weighs our hearts and keeps our souls knows what we know and holds us responsible to act.
Proverbs 24:12

We must act. Nate and I are not the people we were when we started this adoption journey. God has broken our hearts for the orphans of the world. We can't go back. Yet to move forward we must wait. Waiting is the most difficult demand. Thankfully we wait, being supported in the strength and courage of God our Father.