LID!

Stands for Logged In Date for all you non-China adoption folks.  ;-)  I didn't know what any of these initials meant myself eight months ago.

A Logged In Date is a celebratory event, because now we are eligible to be matched with our child.  It could happen any day..... in the next five months or so.  :-)

Just last week Mason gave us $10 of his money he's been saving to help bring home his sister.  As our "saver", this is money he's been saving for over a year.  In fact, outside of some money he's given away, I think he has all money he's collected over his nine short years.

A few nights after his donation, he wanted to talk.  He'd been praying and thinking about our little girl and was quite concerned about getting her home.  He wanted to give us ALL of his money if it would  get her here sooner.  We're getting closer, sweet boy.

Simplifying

Over the past few months we've been reading some great books as a family.  Two that really challenged me were Kisses from Katie, followed by Fields of the Fatherless by Tom Davis.  The summary on the back says this...


            "In Bible times, God maintained a special provision for the less fortunate.  As His 
             people harvested their fields, they were instructed to always leave a portion of 
             the crops for those in need.  
                  Today, God's heart continues to beat for the poor, the widows, and the 
             fatherless.  And as His children, our divine commission remains the same, a directive
             that's nothing less thank the heart of the Christian message."


As I was sharing some of the author's thoughts with my family, we began to look around our house with slightly different eyes.  We had A LOT. OF. STUFF.  Katie Davis doesn't even have a kitchen table for her kids to eat at - they sit on the floor.  Convicting.

About this same time, we happened to read Proverbs 21:13 -

             "If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and 
              not be answered."

Through this adoption journey God has brought us face to face with the poor and orphans in a new way.  We know their names.  We're praying for healing, and families for them.  We pray that they would know and love Jesus, and know that Jesus loves them.

So we decided to do something with our abundance.........  We called the ARC.

And they parked this lovely trailer in our front yard for 2 whole weeks.  If we filled it half way, they would donate $500 to a charity of our choice.  Full - $1,000.

We started going through everything in the house - we were giddy!  We've always been good about donating our "junk", but this was a new experience.  Two boxes of train tracks?  One will be just fine.  Two TV's and entertainment centers?  We don't even get a single channel.  Three bags of dress up clothes?  Embarrassing!  And how many pairs of sweatpants does a barely exercising Mama need?!?

It was exhilarating.  Even the kids were into it.  They rushed through school every morning so they could load the truck.  They went through their toys and clothes and made some great choices.  And as a result, we now have cleaned out closets.  The doors can all close.  The basement is spacious. We have more time to do what's important, because we aren't so busy cleaning and trying to manage all of our "stuff".  The ARC sent us a thank you for helping them to serve people with disabilities.  And the money will go to help the fatherless.

It's been almost two months and we haven't missed a thing.  Our only regret?  We honestly did not get rid of enough.

DTC!

Today we received an email stating that our dossier was finished with the critical review process and would be sent to our agency's translation department.  We were told to expect another email in a few days after our dossier was sent to China.

Our I800 - the final document we'd been waiting on

By this afternoon we had a second email in our inbox saying our dossier had been sent!  (Insert tears.)  After 6 1/2 months of work, including some lost clearances, "unclassifiable" fingerprints, denied notarization (more tears - I really haven't been THAT emotional, just the two times mentioned.  :-)), and a (ahem) denied physical examination by the Chinese Consulate (Step #4 of 4 - yes, I dated it incorrectly putting us back at square one on this form!), it was hard to believe our documents were on their way across the ocean!

Sending our final documents to our agency - April 19th

We should be logged in to China's system in the next few weeks, and then matched with our little girl in the next 6 months.  We can hardly wait to see what God has in store.....