Logged In! the Big Wait begins...

Well, we got our last official word of progress until we get our referral letter. Bethany called to tell us our dossier was LOGGED IN on July 14, 2006. This means our dossier is officially "in line" to be reviewed and then (and most importantly) matched. This news should be tempered by the fact that this line is very long, and has been moving slowly. We anticipate at least a year-long wait until we get a referral. So, the Big Wait begins!

This really gets me thinking a lot. I mean, if Salem isn't born yet, her mom is very pregnant. This is a great time to join us in prayer. Amy's already posted about how you can pray with us.

Don't think this is discouraging for us! We are very excited, and this is just one more part of the process. In fact, we are more than halfway through the process. That's a great feeling!

Overseas :)

We are excited to inform you all that TODAY we received the document in the mail stating that our dossier was sent to China (DTC) on June 29!!! For the past few weeks, it has been in between leaving our fingertips and being sealed up to leave on its Salem-bound journey to the orient. Grand Rapids has been successful in processing our paperwork and now its finally on its way:) Now we wait to hear from China. In a few weeks (we hope), we will hear from the CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs) with word that our dossier has been "logged in". Once we have a LID (Log In Date), then the official waiting begins. It looks like it may be next summer or fall before we receive a referral.

What an excitement it was today to open that envelope and see those words!!! I must admit, it has been difficult over the past few weeks. The referral wait time continues to increase and has us wondering if it will continue as steadily or if the processing rate will decrease. Of course, that is what we are praying for. Please pray that the CCAA will hire more workers to help with the back log. And pray for those workers, that the Lord will bless them in their work.

We look on in faith with you. Thank you for praying for our little girl :)

How to Pray for Salem

Our friends, Stephen and Suzanna Nichols (who are about 6 months ahead of us in the adoption process), had a section of their blog dedicated to helping those reading the updates know how to pray for their daughter. We thought it was a great idea!!!

The following is a weekly prayer guide. Drew and I invite you to pray with us for Salem and her journey home. I'm going to cut and paste it onto a word document and plaster it to my bathroom mirror. Feel free to do the same:)

Sunday - the birth family of our little girl
Pray for the protection and health of the birth mother during pregnancy, delivery, and recovery; comfort and peace for the birth father and the birth mother as they struggle with and finally relinquish their daughter

Monday - the birth of our baby
Pray that all goes well with her delivery and there are no complications.

Tuesday - the abandonment process
Pray that she will be found quickly and out of harms way; comfort and peace for the birth family.

Wednesday - the orphanage
Pray that it will be a clean, adequately staffed facility with good care for the all the babies and children who live there.

Thursday - physical health of our little girl
Pray that all of her physical needs are being met; pray for her physical development and stimulation.

Friday - emotional health of our little girl
Pray that someone will pick her up when she cries and that she is nurtured and loved until we can get there to nurture and love her; pray that her transition from the orphanage to our family will go smoothly, that she will learn to recognize us and trust us as her parents.

Saturday - spiritual health of our little girl
Pray that our baby will always feel love, comfort and peace from her heavenly Father, but especially until we can get there to comfort her ourselves; pray that the Lord would give her a tender heart and make her into a woman after His own heart.

And if you ever want to pray for us as well, pray that He would prepare us fully, continuing to mold us into godly parents, for the calling ahead.

On It's Way:)

God is good!!! If you read the previous update, then you know that just yesterday we were anticipating another week of waiting on test results for the final preparations of our dossier. However, when I came home from church last night, there was a message on our answering machine from Laura, one of Dr. Duff's nurses, to inform us that our test results were ready for pick-up!!! So, it turns out that the initial information we recived from the lab tech was correct---only one day's wait.

This morning, I went to the Dr's office first thing (well, after our early morning workout), secured the results in hand and personally delivered them to Bethany. I just received an email from Mary that GR called and they are sending it off for authentication...which means everything is in order:) Yeah!!!

Slight Delay

After relinquishing all of our documents into the hands of others, we were relieved to be in the official last stages of waiting. However, yesterday, I received a call from Mary that revealed a minor setback.

I was excited to hear that our dossier had made it from Nashville to Grand Rapids, meaning it had received the Great Seal Of TN. But, in their detailed scrutiny of the dossier before sending it to China, they found that Drew's medical document was lacking liver and thyroid function results. I immediately called our physician to check on them and found that his liver results were normal, but they had overlooked the thyroid tests for both Drew and myself!!! So, I asked if they could fit us in right away, and we were in lab by 2:00. The lab technician told me that I could pick up the results today. I planned to do that and personally drive them to Bethany to be faxed to GR, but when I called and spoke with the nurse, she said that the technician was mistaken and the results of the thyroid tests would take another 5-7 days.

So, we are waiting again. I will be honest and say that tears filled my eyes when I heard that we would have to wait another week and that our dossier is on hold in GR, but the Lord kept reminding me to trust Him. It's hard not to think about the fact that if we had looked with more care, that we might have caught it ourselves sooner. But, just as He has taught us along this long road, we are trusting Him and resting in the grace that He gives to us. We know that He is orchestrating the time until we are united with our daughter. And, NOTHING can thwart His plans. We rest in grace.

On a happy note, Drew and I just celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary yesterday:) Also, Happy Birthday to Papa Thrift today!!!

Out of Our Hands

As if this situation has ever truly rested in our hands... Today, we will drop off the last fragments of paperwork to our local Bethany office. Whew. It really hasn't been too bad. It would be a breeze if we didn't also have daily and weekly responsibilities. Then again, we've been helped by many friends and family members in an attempt to gather all our documentation. Thanks to you all.

After the bundle of paperwork is deemed "complete," it will be sent to Nashville for the "Great Seal of the State of Tennessee." I suspect it has a guitar on it. Then, it moves to Grand Rapids, home of Bethany's big office. There, it will receive final authentication and scrutiny before it crosses the Pacific. They'll let us know when it officially "logs in" in China, and then we'll, well, wait some more. But we figure that if you consider we've been walking in this direction for over two years, we are officially past the half way point. Ahhhhh. It's all in how you look at it.

We came across a great article today by Russ Moore, the Dean of the Theology School at Southern. He has two adopted boys, and was writing on their 5th birthdays. Hope you enjoy reading it as we did. Click here for the link.

Please continue to pray for us as we wait, and pray for little Salem, not yet born. We can't wait to introduce you to her.

Front Door Delivery

We got it!...Permission to bring Salem home:)

A few weeks ago, we spoke with our postman on his daily rounds and told him about the important envelope. He's been looking for it almost as earnestly as we have:) The doorbell rang yesterday afternoon, and I opened the door to reveal the postman with a package. (We leave for Peru tomorrow on a mission inquiry trip and the parents of one of the missionaries sent a package to us to bring to their daughter in Chiclayo.) As he handed it to me, he also handed a small white envelope and said..."and I believe that you might be looking for this as well." Needless to say, a little squeal erupted from my elated face. Suzanna said we should have taken a picture with the postman for the scrapbook. Maybe we will run him down one day for the commemorative picture:)

We prayed that it would come before leaving for Peru. Although trusted friends are getting our mail, we wanted to have it in hand. It would have been preferable to have had time to gather all documents and have our Dossier on its way to Grand Rapids by now. However,with Mary out of the Bethany office until Tuesday and the on-site notary out today, we concluded that it would be wise and promote much peace in our hearts to wait until we return so that we can sit down together and make sure we have everything in place. Besides, it gives us something to look forward to:) And peace abides as we continue to trust the Lord and His plans.

Please pray for our trip. We will be flying into Lima tomorrow night, spending the night, then driving 10 hours on the PanAmerican Highway to Chiclayo on Sunday. Monday we will drive from Chiclayo into the Andes mountains at 10,000 feet into a town called Incawasi. We will spend the next few days meeting with the people in the Lambayeque region on Northern Peru, praying for wisdom and direction from the Lord. We will be assessing the needs of the people, speaking with local pastors, and praying for a glimpse of what the Lord is doing among the people there. On Thursday, we will return to Chiclayo, then to Lima on Friday, then back home on Sunday.

Our job is to gather as much information as we can about this region and its people (98% of which have never had access to the gospel), report back to our local body of believers here at Concord, and seek the Lord in this together to see if He may be calling our church to partner with this people group over the next five to six years. Please pray for our safety, the Lord to be at work in us, and for our eyes to be open to His plans, whatever they may be. This is an incredibly exciting adventure! May the Lord's Name be glorified and may His fame spread to the ends of the earth.

Answers:)

Our wait for the paperwork from the INS was expected to take 6-9 weeks, give or take some. But, when the 13th week rolled around, we started getting nervous, wondering if it had been lost in the mail or in the shuffle of credit card applications. I called Mary to let her know. I thank the Lord for prompting me to call when I did. As we have said before, we have prayed for a peace that passes all understanding.

When I talked to Mary on Wednesday, she was surprised that we hadn't received our paperwork. We initially assumed that the paper bog was increasing and that it was just taking longer. But, a "quick" call to the INS answered some of our questions. Drew tried to contact the INS a few weeks ago, but was unable to get any information, so when Mary offered to communicate to them for us, I was excited that we may have some answers soon:)

Mary has been trying to contact the INS to try to expedite paperwork for a family who is adopting a sibling from Guatemala for the child they have already brought home. The birthmother wants to move to Mexico, and they want to travel as soon as possible to secure the child in their home. Mary said that when she recieved the call from them regarding this family that she would ask about our paperwork as well. Considering it had been a few weeks since she first tried to call, and followed with several more tries, I assumed it would be a while before we heard from her. At least we had a venue for some answers, just to know if it was on its way. However, yesterday, when I came home from school, there was a message on our answering machine from Mary. They called her back!!! She had answers for us! Our fingerprints HAVE been processed, but they didn't have our Home Study (HS). When we went to Nashville in February, we were told that they would look at our HS, stamp it and make note that we were approved for adoption, then give it back. But, somewhere along the way, the HS was lost in the mix. Soooooo, Mary is overnighting the HS to the INS and hopefully we will see the final link in our mailbox soon. Keep praying for all the pieces to come together, for the family waiting to recieve their child from Guatemala, and for Salem.

Thanks for joining our journey to find Salem:)

Amy's Eligible!!!

Yeaaaaaa:) The 30s are fabulous already! I was going to post on my actual birthday, but mom came into town to celebrate with us and wanted to spend as much time with her as we could. Thanks, Mom!!! And thank you to Drew and all my beloved friends who helped to make the day special. To be able to celebrate this day on a Sunday was an extra gift from our Father:) Waking up to worship the One who holds our family's future was sweet.

It seems so real now, knowing Salem's little heart is beating out there and we are so close to bringing her home. Please continue to pray as we wait for THE envelope in the mail. As soon as it comes, we will beeline to Bethany, downtown Chattanooga, and to Nashville for the final preparations of our dossier. Even the mailman knows it is coming and is anxious to find it for us:) So, we wait.....and trust the Lord:)

Our friends, the Nichols, who are also adopting from China have their dossier already logged in. They are hoping to travel in November. As you pray for the Lord to prepare us, pray for them as well. They will be paving the way for us. We can't wait to meet their little "Peanut."

The Lord brought this verse to mind today. I have been praying for the Lord to keep my heart from anxiousness. While we hoped our paperwork would be on its way to China by now, we know that His plans are bigger and better than any of our expectations or hopes. Read it an be encouraged in your heart today and trust alongside us.......

"Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice!.......do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."
Philippians 4:5-7

Holding Pattern

Hello again:) Sorry for the looooooooooong silence. The hustle and bustle of paperwork and interviews a few months ago had us updating more, but for the past 8 weeks we have been in a long holding pattern. Every day, we are searching our mailbox for a big yellow envelope from the INS that holds the I-171. This is the last document that we need before we take all of our certified documents to get The Great Seal of Tennessee. Once it comes, we will call Mary or Peggy to make an appointment for them to overlook our packet and make sure that we have everything in place. Then we will venture to downtown Chattanooga for processing, then to Nashville again to get The Great Seal. Once we have that, we can compile all documents into our dossier!!!:)

Only 22 more days until I (Amy) am officially qualified to adopt from China. We hope to go ahead and send the dossier in the next few weeks, though. It has to first go to Grand Rapids, MI (Bethany's Home Office) for more processing, then will head to China from there where it will be logged into the system and translated into Chinese. Lord willing, the dossier will be logged in as close to April 30th as possible. But we are trusting the Lord in His timing!

A few weeks ago, we heard that the referral wait has been pushed even longer than before. It now stands at 10-11 months after log in. However, the Lord is actively instilling His amazing peace. We are resting in the truth that He is sovereign and know that His plans are the absolute best. He has been so gracious to show us that very truth in others areas of our lives just to keep us reminded:) So, for those of you who are doing the math, it looks like, as long as the 10-11 month time period remains the same, that we will receive Salem's referral somewhere close to March of 2007.

As we wait together, please be in prayer for our family. As you pray for these things, our prayer is that your hearts will rejoice in the goodness of God as He reveals Himself through the answers. May He gain ALL glory, for He alone is worthy!!!

What to pray for specifically:

That the fingerprints will come in this week
That the referral waiting time will not be extended any longer
That in all the waiting, we will keep our hearts set on God's agenda, not ours
That Salem will be safe and will receive excellent care and nutrition
That the Lord will begin calling her to Himself
That He would gain glory through ALL of the tiny little details!!!

31 year old baby in the house

Well, Nashville went well. One lesson learned - all our friends who were fingerprinted on Wednesdays waited HOURS for their 5 minute fingerprinting. We showed up on a Thursday and were in and out in a half hour. Would have been less, but my arms were "uncooperative" with the computer taking fingerprints. It has to be just right or they do it again. Who knew I had over 40 fingerprints?

But now, I am home. Sick. I don't think I've had a fever like this (102.5) since becoming an adult, and let me tell you, I didn't like it. Not one bit. Docs aren't sure if it's the flu or a viral sinus infection, but just for fun, my body added an ear infection. So I'm on a couple of designer drugs (my very first "z-pack") and feeling a bit better. Just being able to sit up and type is a plus. But it will be a few days until I'm good again.

All this has got me thinking. I hear about families having sick kids and sick parents in the house, and suddenly, I don't know how they do it. I was absolutely worthless for 36 hours, and I don't carry much market value now. Amy has been great - getting things for me, letting me feel ok about being worthless, and spraying the house down with Lysol after I went to bed. So I'm trying to imagine what it would be like with 2 babies in the house - an infant and a helpless 31 year old. Whew. Hard to imagine. But parents do it every day. I guess we will too.

It's just one of those moments when you realize how different life will be when Salem gets here. You realize how adjusted you are to "just the two of us." They say everything changes when kids come along, but I never thought about Salem changing the way we are when one of us is really sick.

All this has just prompted me to pray for Salem's health. She's probably still in her Chinese mom's womb, developing and growing. Pray for her to grow strong and resilient. Pray for her immune system, that it will develop normally. Pray for the health and safety of her Chinese mom, too. Thanks.

Nashville Bound

I would have used an exclamation mark, but the top row of keys on my keyboard stopped working two weeks ago. [need to go to staples...]

We got our home study back today thanks to Mary, our awesome case worker. That means we're heading to the INS office in Nashville on Thursday to get our fingerprints taken by the Feds. This is great news, as a lot of couples spend a lot of time twiddling their ink-stained thumbs waiting for their INS report to come back. The earlier we get the process started, the more likely we can get our packet off to China by Amy's birthday.

Thanks for all the prayers. I couldn't imagine the process being smoother thus far. Pray God will keep His merciful hand on us.

Home Study Pending

Sorry for the long moment of silence on the blog. We have been working to get our home study finished so that we can travel to Nashville to have our fingerprints taken for the INS. Last week we received the invitation to come, but we have to take our completed home study with us when we go. So far, we have everything but a few documents, and we hope to have it all in place for Mary and Peggy to review before we leave. We are shooting for next Thursday. Please pray that we can have everything ready by Thursday. Time is ticking and we want to be the best stewards of the pocket the Lord has given us. Again, the results can take 6-9 weeks. April is just around the corner!

A bit of a shock came to us this week when we found out that another couple, who have already had their dossier logged in China, announced that they are PREGNANT!!! In the initial handful of paperwork, candidates for adoption have to sign a pregnancy statement which basically says that you understand that if you get pregnant during the process, your paperwork is frozen. Once a couple enters into the world of adoption and all that the actual process entails, becoming pregnant is bittersweet. Thankfully, just last month, a change in administration in Grand Rapids (Bethany's Home Office) has considered a change in this policy. It looks, as of now, that once a family's dossier is logged into China, it is so to speak "unfreezable". However, the validity of this is still pending. For the Apps, it was exciting news, but a reality check. They want to continue with the adoption, but Michelle is due in August. They had anticipated traveling to China in August or September!!! Sooooooo........it looks like David will be traveling alone to bring their daughter, Hannah, home. Their other two children are so excited:)

Keep praying. It's so exciting to see how the Lord unfolds His plans:) Love you all!

Comments Welcome

We have received emails from several of you responding to our blog. We love hearing from you and would like to know who else has decided to join our journey online. At the end of each entry there is a comment link. Instead of flipping back and forth to your email accounts, you can post a comment right here. Just go to the bottom, click "comments", and a box will pop up for you to enter your words of wisdom:) It will be fun for us to read them all in one place and to share them with others who visit our site. It's also a good place to ask questions, since we can answer them online. Now, off to do some major cleaning.......Our Home Visit is scheduled for Tuesday at 10:00am. Have a fabulous Monday! Love to all!!!

The Lord's Hand

What a day it has been! A good one I might add:) We had a full schedule with my individual interview with Mary at 10:00, then our joint interview at 11:00, lunch at Chili's, and a 3 hour doctor visit. Yes, the medical examination requirements are so extensive that they even suprised our doctor! But we are moving right along and are being amazed at every turn how the Lord's plans are unfolding.

During our interview today, we put together a few puzzle pieces that some might casually attribute to a "small world" coincident. However, it became even more evident to us that the Lord has been walking this road with us before we even knew where we were going.

In talking with Mary, we realized that we have much in common. Both of us grew up Presbyterian and were involved with Young Life. She went to Wake Forest University which is directly down the street from the house I grew up in, and at one point worked with Young Life leadership while she was there. Her oldest daughter, whom she originally wanted to name Salem (go figure), was at Windy Gap on Work Crew the summer of 1996, while I was a summer guide at Pioneer Plunge, then went on to work at Noah's Ark (a Christian rafting company in Colorado that led me twice down the raging rapids of the Arkansas River...and a place where I always dreamed of working). It seemed like everything we spoke of led us into a common life experience. But as we were leaving, the sight of a small wooden box with the inscription of "King College" caught my eye.

The campus of King College holds a very special place in my heart. I spent several summers there as a junior high camper at a PFR camp called The Great Escape. I asked if she went to King College and she began to tell me that they used to live in Bristol and worked there in ministry. Soon we found out that her husband worked with PFR ministries and directed those very programs that I had attended as a young teenager!!! Even several of the guys they had on PFR staff were Wake students that volunteered at our church in Winston-Salem to whom I had direct contact with and who answered many questions I had as the Lord was pursuing my heart. It was wild!!! I even commented to Drew in the office before leaving of how cool it was that Mary and her husband were behind the ministry that was instrumental in leading me to Christ. But, it wasn't until Drew and I were sitting at Chili's about to order our meal that it hit me.......God knew at that moment of my life, as I was sitting on the floor of the cafeteria at King College hearing about the love of Christ, that Mary and Rocky were there. Tears welled up in my eyes with the realization that as God was in the process of adopting my heart, in the same room were the very people who would be leading my future husband and I through an adoption process to bring our daughter home. At the same time the Lord was quietly laying the name "Salem" on my heart (see "Our Christmas Letter"), He was writing our family story (that we would come to realize more than 15 years later), and clearly ordaining our journey to bring her home:) WOW!!! It is amazing to know a faithful God who hems us into His will, "scoops" us up, and carries us to the places to where He is calling!

"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for wholeness and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope."
Jeremiah 29:11 ESV

ugh....Paperwork

Ok, if there was ever a reason to reorganize every important scrap of paper on your life, this is it. We've finished the poking and prodding of the "self-study," a rather thorough questionnaire about us, what makes us tick and every aspect of our life together and apart. The social workers use it as an advance snapshot for our pending interviews (the home study). That wasn't too tough, since we generally wear our lives inside out. But now comes the fun stuff. Our friends, the Nichols, are several months ahead of us in the process. Tonight, they shared their journey thus far with the church. (they did a great job, by the way.) One thing Stephen pointed out is that, with international adoption, you get to wade through the bureaucracy of TWO countries. I laughed then. I'm groaning now.

So now I'm tracking down our financial stats, insurance policies, previous employers, family history, and references. Later this week, we begin our interviews with Mary, our case worker from Bethany. We also get doctor visits, criminal background checks, and birth certificates requested this week. I'm starting to feel the weight of the process. But at least it's progress. Ha ha - I guess we've been feeling the "wait" of the process for a much longer time.

But the Lord is faithful and He is good, and He has sustained us through the waiting. Now, I know He will sustain us through the paperwork. It's not every day that you receive a "whole life inspection," but that's what it feels like. It's certainly not a bad thing.

On a side note, Amy headed back to school last week after a long Christmas break. I'm enrolled in Spanish classes at Chattanooga State. I realized I can squeeze in three semesters of Spanish before Salem arrives, and I won't want to take them once she's here. Nothing like a baby coming to make you hurry through a "to do" list.

Well, I'm about to break the seal on the "China Packet," an ADDITIONAL pack of forms we get to fill out. It turns out all the others we have are only for the stateside crowd: Bethany and the Feds. On a progress note, we have sent off our I-600A form, a permission slip to ask permission to bring a foreign child to the states for adoption. When we get that back (hopefully soon), we will have an appointment to get fingerprinted in Nashville. After that, we wait for the Federal forms, the Home Study, and our prints to get clearance. Since this is a time consuming process, we look forward to getting our request back so we can get fingerprinted and begin waiting. You can pray for that process to speed through. Thanks.

Also pray for us as we wade through paperwork. While I'm used to juggling lots of things at once, it's not due to my great organizational skills. Pray God will help us stay focused and organized through this paperwork process. Thanks. And thanks for checking in with us. I feel like the process has truly begun. (We even wrote our first check.) We'll probably post weekly to let you know how it is going and how we are managing.

Merry Christmas!

Many of you may be visiting this page as a result of our Christmas card. We are excited you chose to join us on this journey and we wish you a very Merry Christmas as we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus. I'll take just a few lines to share what has happened since our last post...

Our case workers, Mary and Peggy, have been hard at work furnishing us with a five-month timeline starting in December. We began the official paperwork this month, having already submitted our prelimenary application and being approved to move on as planned. We had our first appointment last Friday, one of many to come. Our local fingerprints were taken which was a huge blessing. I called at the beginning of that week hoping to snag a date in January, and they were able to fit us in that very same week!!! So, now we have one fingerprint appointment down and one to go. Our next will hopefully be in early February with the INS in Nashville. They will receive the I 600 A immigration form that we sent last week with our first official payment and then send us a preselected date for that appointment. Please pray that we will have a date for EARLY February, as it can take sometimes 6-9 weeks to get those results back. Our medical examination appointments are scheduled for the 19th of January, and our interviews fall within the following week. We will each meet with our case workers seperately then also have a joint interview as well as a home visit. January is a big month! As December has already flown by, we anticipate the next four months will, too.

May your Christmas be filled with JOY!
We love you all!

Our Christmas Letter

Dear Loved Ones,

There is so much we could share with you about this past year, and I could fill many pages attempting to do so. However, in our brief letter to you this Christmas, we would like to give testimony to what the Lord has been and is teaching us about Himself in the midst of our journey.

Many of you know, as our last letter to you solicited prayer on behalf of our family, that Drew and I have hope to raise children. The past four years of marriage and ministry have been filled with joys and sorrows as we have prayed to conceive a child. Again, we could write a book sidestepping each stride of our adventure, but will not subject you to the details of our lives. One thing we do wish to exclaim is the greatness of our God and how He has chosen to reveal Himself to us through this.

As we have gone month to month, carefully documenting and becoming experts in the world of fertility treatments, our God, our Rock, has been walking this road alongside us, reminding us of His sovereignty and great love. How we have learned to trust Him!!! He stands firm on His throne and His ways are good! In a study of Genesis this year, our pastor reminded me of a truth that I have clung to in the midst of our sorrow and seasons of questioning why…God opens and closes the womb for His purposes. As I sat and listened to those nine words echo through my mind and heart, every beat resounded the love our Lord. As I hear these words over and over, I see a small glimpse of the plans that He has always had for us.

In the beginning of our relationship, Drew and I took many opportunities to share our hopes and dreams with each other. One of these, on each of our lists, was to adopt a child one day. Although we anticipated adopting after having biological children, we are understanding more clearly and accepting that His plans for us may or may not include conceiving a child.
Within the past year, the Lord has astounded us with the realization that He is ABLE to create a child for our family in someone else’s womb! He has opened our hearts to see the beauty of adoption, created by Him. As we, too, have been adopted into the inheritance of our Lord through Christ, it is a privilege to be on the other side of that, choosing to extend the grace that we have received to our child.

Heavy on our hearts from the beginning has been the growing dilemma of child abandonment in China. Most of these children are little girls whom are desperately wanted by their mothers, but are secretly relinquished due to the one child policy and the social demand for little boys. Another government regulation has kept us from pursuing this sooner: the parental age requirement of 30 years. As I will be celebrating my 30th birthday this April, we are excited to announce that we have begun the adoption process to bring our daughter home. To have the opportunity to give one of these girls not only a family, but an opportunity to be raised in a home where she will hear and see the grace of God as our child is too beautiful for words.

It is amazing what the Lord places on our hearts before we even know what it means. It is exciting to discover His plans as we piece together the clues to this adventure. As we have discussed names for a little girl, one continues to stand out. It is a name I selected over 15 years ago! What once was a name I loved became special as Drew and I, both from Winston-Salem, began dreaming about a family. It comes from the Hebrew word "shalom", meaning peace, completeness and wholeness. It wasn’t until just recently that the name we had chosen so long ago had meaning for our daughter. As we have journeyed through the ups and downs of the past few years, the Prince of Peace has been gracious to instill within us a peace that only He can give. Knowing she will be born into a hostile environment and will experience much brokenness in her first year of life, we are praying now that the Creator will place that same solid peace within her forming heart. Also knowing her need for Christ, we are praying now that the Lord will cause her heart to beat for Him. As we are honored to be entrusted with her as her parents, and will find great joy in providing a secure place for her to receive love and acceptance, her ultimate security will come from Christ alone. Our prayer for her now, as she is in the womb, is that our daughter, Salem, will one day know the joy of being complete and whole - shalom - through Jesus Christ.

We greatly desire for each of you to have a part in praying for our daughter, anticipating her arrival, and celebrating with us when she comes home. We have started a web log online that will document our adoption journey. Join us at drewandamyscott.blogspot.com. We will keep it up to date with what we know and what we learn, and we invite you to pray with us as we look forward to finding Salem.

As we celebrate our Savior this Christmas, we are reminded of the great lengths He went to in order show His love to us, to redeem us from a life of brokenness. He came as a baby, into a hostile world, to save us from our own hostility towards God and each other. A song that we have listened to over and over this Christmas reveals God’s power, humility, and love that He demonstrates to us in the Christ Child. Our prayer is that Salem will recognize that her God willingly and humbly came into her world, to bring her into completeness with Him. As I listen to this song, I imagine that she may one day share, more intimately than us, the understanding of being born in such a lowly and hidden place.

"Labor of Love"
©2004 Andrew Peterson
(From Behold the Lamb of God)

It was not a silent night
There was blood on the ground
You could hear a woman cry
In the alleyways that night
On the streets of David's town
And the stable was not clean
And the cobblestones were cold
And little Mary full of grace
With the tears upon her face
Had no mother's hand to hold

It was a labor of pain
It was a cold sky above
But for the girl on the ground in the dark
With every beat of her beautiful heart
It was a labor of love

Noble Joseph at her side
Callused hands and weary eyes
There were no midwives to be found
In the streets of David's town
In the middle of the night
So he held her and he prayed
Shafts of moonlight on his face
But the baby in her womb
He was the Maker of the moon
He was the Author of the faith
That could make the mountains move

It was a labor of pain
It was a cold sky above
But for the girl on the ground in the dark
With every beat of her beautiful heart
It was a labor of love
For little Mary full of grace
With the tears upon her face
It was a labor of love

We anticipate traveling to China soon after Christmas 2006. This year will be filled with paperwork, interviews and months of waiting for our referral. We are excited about the next chapter of our life’s novel and give thanks to the Lord, the Creator, the Giver of Life, the Sovereign One, the Prince of Peace.

Kneeling before the manger throne,
Drew and Amy

Highlights from 2005
--We rescued our Australian Cattle Dog mix, affectionately known as "Cody Bear", whose favorite pastimes include running with Amy, playing fetch, a good belly rub, and chasing the UPS truck.
--We traveled to Lima (Saul Cantaral) and Huaraz, Peru with our church to share the gospel of Christ, sponsored 9 year old Luci through AMG, and practiced our Spanish-speaking skills.
--Amy loves her new part-time Reading Interventionist position at East Brainerd Elementary. She also teaches one of the youth girls Sunday School classes, and has returned to her love of art and painting.
--Drew continues to enjoy his position at Concord Baptist as the Minister of Music, nurturing solid Christ centered relationships with the other staff and some guys from our college ministry. He has enjoyed developing his guitar-playing skills, even playing on Sunday nights at church.

We have a timeline!!!

It is so exciting to share this wonderful story with all of you. We give thanks to the Lord above all Who knows the plans that He has for us. As we have already learned to do, we will continue to trust in Him and lean on Him every step of the way. It is all becoming so real! With each new day, we are reminded that somewhere out there, growing in the womb of her birth mother, is our daughter, Salem.

Until now, we have been in a holding pattern. Due to government regulations in China, both parents must be 30 years of age to be eligible for adoption. I (Amy) will be 30 in April, so now is the time to begin filling out paperwork. Our goal is to have the Dossier (Huge Official State-Sealed Packet) on it's way to China on or as close to May 1st as possible. We met with our two case workers, Peggy and Mary, at Bethany Christian Services about two months ago to discuss the process. They were so wonderful to come up with a timeline for us to follow over the next 5 months. The first on the list is to complete our Self Study and to make appointments for our fingerprints and medical examinations. As we have observed in the past, fingerprint appointments can take a while to be scheduled and processed, so please be in prayer that they will come back promptly. Of course, we will keep you all updated as this process unfolds.

Thank you to everyone who is praying. Here are some specific requests...
1. for Salem's development in the womb
2. for her birth mother in her pregnancy, that she will be healthy and safe in a hostile environment.
3. that the Lord would protect them both in delivery and afterwards.
4. that, even in the womb, the Lord would cause our daughter's heart to beat for Him, and He will instill in her heart a solid peace.
5. that the Lord would in His own way, reveal Himself to her birth mother through her pregnancy and a difficult choice of giving up her child.
6. that the Lord will prepare a place for Salem to be taken care of while she waits to come home.

For more information on adoption from China, we recommend a wonderful book by Karin Evans, The Lost Daughters of China. It gives powerful insight into the growing delimma of child abandonment and how we can help. Although the author does not write from a Christian perspective, it has been evident to us in reading that the Lord is working in the midst of such horrible circumstances.

We love you all and invite you to be a part of this exciting journey!!!

Welcome to Our BlogSpot!

This will be the main place to find out what is going on as we work to find Salem, our daughter who we will bring home from China. This will be a place to read news and prayer requests, or give us encouragement or shared info. We want to share this experience with our family and friends as God gives us faith and courage.