Hello friends! Well, things are steadily moving in the right direction for us! Thought I'd give you a quick summary of the past few weeks so you know where we stand as of now.
Upcoming Fundraiser: Rummage Sale
April 13, 2013 - 7 AM - 4 PM
Parking lot of St. Andrew's Lutheran Church
4910 Claremont Avenue
Stockton, CA 95207
We got quite a few donations for our rummage sale and my garage was filling up quickly! So I decided to have a small yard sale at my house last Saturday and made
$600! I'd say that's a worthwhile way to spend my Saturday! This was items donated from only 6 families! Imagine what we can do at the big sale at St. Andrews on
April 13 if many more families are willing to donate their unused and unwanted items! I'm hoping we can pull in a few thousand that day. We shall see!
If you have anything you don't need and would like to donate it to our rummage sale, please call me and let me know! I'm quickly running out of room at my home again, so if you can hold on to it until April 12, that would be great. But, if you really need to get rid of it now, then I'll take it off your hands and store it until the rummage sale. I'll take anything! Clothing, housewares, books, toys, kids gear, sports gear, furniture, electronics, tools, home decor, etc, etc, etc. I learned last week that people will pretty much buy anything if the price is right, so bring it on!
I also need volunteers to help staff our rummage sale. If you are interested, let me know. I need help on Friday evening sorting donations, as well as Saturday working the sale.
The Paper Trail
Last week we knocked a bunch of items off our dossier list...things like criminal records checks (we have none, in case you were wondering), doctor's clearances (we are healthy enough to parent a new child), and much, much more! We've done all we can do at this point to get this large stack of "proof" ready to send to the Chinese Embassy in San Francisco that will convince them we are able to adopt Ai Lan. We are in a holding pattern right now waiting for a form to return from the Department of Homeland Security that needs to be put into our dossier. After that arrives, all our dossier documents need to go to the Secretary of State's office in Sacramento to verify that the notaries we used were acting legally. Then once that happens, we send our dossier to the Chinese Embassy and cross our fingers that it gets processed asap. This part of the adoption process takes months and months...so I'll be praying for patience every day, I'm sure! This paper trail also costs a lot of money to complete, so if you are one of the generous people who have already donated to our cause, your donation has helped pay for this very important step in our adoption process. Thank you!
In the Meantime...
While we wait for our dossier to be completed, we have a few more pleasant tasks to undertake. My favorite is that we will be putting together a photo album that will be mailed to Ai Lan. She hasn't been told that she's been matched with us yet because they want to wait until the dossier is accepted (understandably), but as soon as this happens, her caregivers will use this photo album to introduce us to her. I'm excited to assemble it!
Secondly, we are in the process of moving our bedroom to our upstairs room and turning our room into a playroom for the kids. This will allow us to move much of the girls toys and books out of their room and into the playroom, thus making room in the girls' room for Ai Lan. Now, whether she sleeps in there when she comes home is another story! I'm guessing she'll be sleeping close to us for a while, but who knows! Josie told our caseworker, "I'm excited to have Ai Lan sleeping our our room. Then if she wakes up in the middle of the night crying, I can just bring her into bed with me and rub her back and tell her it's gonna be alright. Then she can just sleep in bed with me." My goodness, how I love that girl.
We are also working on a list of medical questions that we can request answers from by Ai Lan's caregivers. They are not doctors and can only give answers to the best of their abilities, but this will help us find out things like whether she has been having seizures that may not be recognized as seizures (such as blankly staring for a few seconds or punching the air with her arms unexplainably). We have not been told that she had seizures, but that doesn't mean she hasn't, and since seizures are a common symptom of Sturge-Weber Syndrome, we will be on the lookout for them as soon as we take custody of her.
Please Pray with Us for Ai Lan
And of course, we will continue to pray for Ai Lan daily, and we ask that you do the same! We pray that her caregivers take the best possible care of her. We pray that her Sturge-Weber Syndrome is mild and stays that way, but if not, that God prepares us to care for Ai Lan's medical needs. We pray that God prepares our hearts and homes to receive our new love. We pray that God keeps her safely in his arms until we can bring her home. We pray that our Father whispers in her ear every day, "You are loved, you are valuable, you are cherished, you are wanted, you are not alone."
