Our Daughter!!

I know it has been a really long time since we have updated our site, and we really have so much to share with you all!  God has done some really amazing things in our life, especially in our hearts, and one of these days we are going to fill you all in!  For now, though, we're going to do a quick catch-up of the last few months:

On January 21st, we received a call from our agency that they had a referral for us if we wanted to take a look.  We were pretty floored as we didn't expect to get referrals until at least probably May.  We weren't really sure what to do.  Plus, we were still hoping to be able to adopt the twins we mentioned previously, but they still weren't on any of the lists.  We received the referral e-mail and see this little face:

This is Li Meng Di.  She is 2.  She has cleft palate that has not been repaired and congenital heart disease.  The records also indicate that she has a growth abnormality and possibly a seizure disorder.  Because of her multiplicity of medical problems, she is considered a "Special Focus" child, which are the children who have a hard time being adopted.  We had no idea what to do about her and we had 72 hours to figure it out.  We were worried about all of the possible ramifications of her health problems and all of the unknowns.  We had thought we knew what we wanted, but seeing her sweet little face and knowing that she has been waiting for a family, we waffled.  David had some physicians look at her medical records so we could get a better idea of what to expect.  We prayed, and prayed, and prayed some more.  We had other people pray with us.  On Wednesday the 23rd, God gave us such peace that she was the daughter He had for us.  If you have never experienced that kind of peace before, let me tell you, it will blow your mind.  We just totally knew.  We sent in our letter of intent and received notice of our pre-approval from China on February 4th.  Our dossier was still in a work in progress at that point, so we knew we'd have a wait on our hands, but the tentative timeline we were given was that we will probably be able to go get her sometime this summer, anywhere from June to September, but probably more towards August/September.  Currently, our dossier has been sent to our agency for "critical review" to make sure everything is perfect before it gets sent to China.  We are hoping that things are fine so that in a few weeks all of that paperwork will be winging it's way to China to be logged in. 

Here is another picture of our beautiful Meng Di, or Lily-Mei as we call her:

We are able to see lots and lots more pictures of her via her orphanage's website, but obviously can't share those online. 

We have sent her a care package with some family pictures, clothing, and toys, so hopefully she will get those in a more few weeks.  Until then, we can't wait to bring our lovely Lily-Mei home!!