Official Travel Dates!

We now have our Consulate appointment, March 24th, and our official travel dates, and our airline tickets.

We will leave for China on March 12th, a day earlier than expected. I should know better than to have expectations with this roller coaster adoption process ;). And we will leave China for home on March 26th.

Time to PACK!

Here we go!

We'll I have BIG news that I have been sitting on because it was tentative till now... but we are leaving for China on the 13th of MARCH! Just two short weeks from today. I can hardly believe it. After all this wait it hardly seems real... But it is. XuXu Lynn your family is coming!


I also have not posted much because I have been busy getting ready to go. Sooooo much to do. :)

We are all so excited, that I really don't have words for the joy.
(Big happy tears right now.)
Children are adopted everyday. It is an ordinary occurrence, but what a sacred moment and a miracle it is when adoption touches you and your family. When God brings people together who are worlds apart and unites them with love.
No words... just joy.

Be praying for us all. We leave on the 13th and will return from China on either the 26th, 27th, or 28th depending on our Consulate Appointment (to finalize everything).

Update on the crisis caused by China's severe winter.

The following is a letter written by Jenny Bowen, Executive Director of Half the Sky Foundation, to thank all those who donated to Half the Sky to help the orphans in China during the most severe winter storms they have had in 50 years. My gratitude to my friends who contributed and or prayed, when I sent out an SOS about the situation.

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress..." James 1:27 NIV.

Here's the letter:

On behalf of many, many thousands of children who remained safe and warm through China’s toughest winter storms in 50 years, THANK YOU!

The weather has warmed considerably. On Wednesday, all power was finally restored.

Director Liu of the Yihuang County SWI in Jiangxi province called us on Friday. He said that Yihuang was the last place in China to have light again. Thanks to you, the orphanage was able to buy a generator which produced just enough power to light the children’s building. Although one of their buildings was severely damaged by snow and the staff had to fetch well water from the countryside for many days, no one was hurt and all 63 children stayed well. The director called to make sure we all knew how grateful he is for aid from the Little Mouse Emergency Fund.

Our staff in Beijing has had conversations like this one all week long as we made arrangements to wire reimbursement for locally purchased goods to 98 different welfare institutions. Today we are pleased to announce the end of this extraordinary relief effort. From all over the world, this community has raised almost 5 Million Yuan RMB (US$700,000) to protect the children!

Approximately 3 Million is going directly to those institutions which suffered through this disaster. The remaining funds will be used to help all children's welfare institutions establish a store of emergency provisions so that this never happens again. 100% of the funds donated to the Little Mouse Emergency Fund are dedicated to this purpose.

On Wednesday we will meet with Vice-Minister of Civil Affairs, Dou YouPei to make a ceremonial presentation of the proceeds of the Little Mouse Emergency Fund to China’s orphaned children, and to discuss a plan for disaster preparation in the welfare institutions. The Ministry of Civil Affairs understands that this is a gift to the children from people of many nations and they look forward to the opportunity to express their gratitude.

It has been a tremendous pleasure and an honor to be a part of this effort. I understand what “people power” means in a whole new way. When people really care, nothing can stop them from doing what needs to be done.

As of today, the Fund is closed. If there are donations on the way, we will include them in the fund. But if you are considering a gift today, please, instead, support the Half the Sky programs that give children the loving care of family every single
day. Even when the weather is calm.

With love and gratitude,

Jenny

Jenny Bowen
Executive Director
Half the Sky Foundation
www.halfthesky.org

Half the Sky was created in order to enrich the lives and enhance the prospects for orphaned children in China. We establish and operate infant nurture and preschool programs, provide personalized learning for older children and establish loving permanent family care and guidance for children with disabilities. It is our goal to ensure that every orphaned child has a caring adult in her life and a chance at a bright future.

Want to receive our free Half the Sky newsletter, full of stories and photos, via regular mail? Just go to our website www.halfthesky.org and click on "Join our Mailing List."

XuXu's Room

It's so nice to have a nursery again... and the room is not as difficult for me emotionally as I thought it would be. Let me explain...

After we moved Zion to his surf themed "big boy" room, the nursery became a guest room and office for my husband. The decor didn't really change much. The baby things got put away and a desk and office things got put in. There was also a twin bed in there for guests. For years that was what it was.

Well, at the end April of 2007 when my mom finally got out of the hospital after a three month stay (she was fighting cancer... actually an infection that was a complication of the cancer). She came to live with us because she was still too sick to go all the way home, which was in a small town in Northern CA. She was with us for only three days, when her condition deteriorated and I had to take her back to the hospital. From there it was a rapid down hill slide and she passed away on May 2nd 2007.

So needless to say that since then, that room has been difficult for me to spend time in. I wasn't sure I could handle it being XuXu's room at first, especially without radically changing it. Well, because everything is suddenly moving so fast with the adoption we don't have time to change it. So I had to just set it back up. I've added a couple of girly-er touches. So now that it's done it feels like a sweet happy nursery and reminds me of when my son was a baby. Thank God for the peace He provides. And it is somehow a connection between XuXu and my mom... miss you Mom, love you.

First Shower for XuXu

My beautiful prayer group friends, Susan, Christine and Lisa... (that's me on the end.)


put on a gorgeous tea party for me to welcome and help us prepare for XuXu. Family and friends drove in from the LA area and from here in Ventura. They made delicious tea sandwiches and salads, and Christine brought the most adorable Petite Fours for dessert. The table setting was so beautiful with pretty china, silver and pink roses.




XuXu received so many pretty clothes and baby girl things. Having girly things is so much fun... especially for a girly girl such as myself. During the opening of the gifts each guest said a blessing for XuXu and our family. I cried... it is so touching and humbling to hear the heart of your loved ones towards you.




I feel so honored and blessed to have such loving and caring family and friends. I can't wait to dress her in the beautiful clothes and play tea party with the too cute for words tea set my sister-in-law Rita gave her. What a special day that will always be in my heart. Thank you everyone... especially Susan, Lisa and Christine!

A gift for XuXu

After a lot of research on how to send it, we finally decided to send XuXu a care package ourselves. I finally finished putting it together today. We hope she will receive it before we get there. With the severe winter weather China is having and the Chinese New Year Holiday, there may be delays.

I made a little album of family pictures with captions translated by my dad and I made her a baby blanket and I put in a cute little bunny that makes a "boing, boing" sound when you squeeze it. My dad also graciously translated a letter to accompany the gift. I'm so grateful that he is fluent and literate in Mandarin.

Today, I also worked on the gifts to bring to the nannies and orphanage director etc. etc. and a couple extra just in case.
And over the weekend we worked on getting her room ready. Bill had been using that room as an office. So we started cleaning out my art studio so that we could combine his office with it and get XuXu's room ready. I'd say we're about 50% done. There is still so much to do in such a short time.

Such as Packing!! I have a lot of packing anxiety! I am a notorious over packer and can't do that on this trip, but still need to be prepared for everything. How do you do that!?!?!! I'm praying we find out some concrete travel days soon. The guessing is making me nuts. I need a goal line to look at to plan better. Well, we're getting there little by little. It's getting more and more real.

Last summer I found this quote at a gallery in Ojai and felt it described feelings we had for the daughter that we did not yet know, perfectly:
"For a long time there were only your footprints and laughter in our dreams, and even from such small things, we knew we could not wait to love you forever."

Some times I'm overwhelmed by the fact that those dreams will be reality soon.

How Zion got his name.

Here is the story behind my little miracle guy's name.

Two years before Zion was born, when we were trying to get pregnant, we were watching the Grammys. It was the year Lauren Hill debuted with her album "The Miseducation of Lauren Hill". I can't remember if she won the grammy or not, but she did perform. She sang the song "To Zion", which is about her son and choosing to keep him instead of aborting him the way her friends and family advised her. It is a very moving song of a mother's love. After hearing it Bill said to me, "Zion is a cool name." And I said "For our kid?!" I wasn't sure it fit at the time... but we put it on our list of baby names anyway, (which got very long by the way.)

Then we waited and prayed and waited and prayed for years for the stick to turn blue. After it finally did and God answered our prayers for a child, we went about the business of narrowing down our list of names. Finding out that he was a boy at the 20 week sonogram helped.

Now, I love names with meaning. I feel like saying someone's name is like declaring what that means over them and speaking that into their life. So to figure out which names were the most meaningful to us we had about 5 baby naming books and crossreferenced them continually during this process. (Do you see the research theme repeating itself here?)

And now you are saying, "Alright already! What does his name mean?!?" Well, Zion, is a biblical name. In the Bible, Zion is the name of the mountain of God and the city of God, "the place where God dwells". It also represents Christ and the new covenant where Mt. Sinai represents the law. It represents all the redemption and mercy and love God promises us through Christ. As for all those baby name books, the name Zion was in only three of the five, and in those it meant "promise" and "perfect".

Once we found out these things about the name Zion, I knew it had to be his name. Especially after all the prayer that had gone up by us and family and friends on his and our behalf to bring him into this world. He symbolized God's promise to us, his perfect provision for our desire to be parents. And calling him Zion would be speaking over him that he IS the dwelling place of God. God will live in his heart. So on August 10th, 2000 (my birthday) on a hill over looking Ventura, Bill said I could make the final choice for his name. (We were still trying to decide between Zion and Max at the time. Bill was not sure he liked such an unusual name.) I chose Zion. And then Alexander for his middle name, meaning "protector of his people". I also liked the alitteration in Zion Alexander Denzel.

When Zion was born later that year on 12-2-2000, he was all that we had prayed for and more. Our little miracle. Our perfect promise.

What's in a name?

I have always been one for unusual names and names with meaning or a story behind them. Maybe because of my own name... Amorisa Malika. Amorisa is America and Formosa put together. My mom being an America and my dad being from Taiwan (formerly known as Formosa - beautiful island), they put the two together and got Amorisa. It also means "beloved". My middle name, Malika, is Swahili for "angel". My mom learned some Swahili in her 20's thinking she might go to Africa on a mission trip, but it didn't happen. So I got my middle name from it instead.


So the reason for this post is to tell you how XuXu got her name...

Early on in our adoption, I think before we even applied to our agency, I was reading online adoption stories. I came across a story with a little girl whose Chinese sir name was Xu. (I can't remember the rest of her name and I can't find the story any more.) Well her new adoptive parents called her Xu Xu. And not knowing how to pronounce any Mandarin at the time, I thought it was pronounced Zu Zu (its really more like shu shu). I thought that was the cutest name ever and it went so well with Zion (our son's name)!

So I asked my dad (who is fluent in Mandarin) a little later what the sir name Xu meant. He said "It could mean 'red' or it could mean 'pearl' and two together shows emphasis, as in 'very red' or 'rare pearl'." Well that sealed the deal for me right there! Our daughter WAS a rare pearl. So we have been referring to her as that ever since. In pinyin (Mandarin spelled out in the English alphabet) it is spelled Zhen Zhu and pronounced more like Tsun Tsu. But for American ears and tongues and because it goes with Zion it is XuXu, pronounced ZuZu! Also we just like it that way.

Her middle name Lynn is to honor the Chinese side of the family. My dad's sir name is Lynn spelled Lin in pinyin. My dad changed it when he immigrated to the USA from Taiwan.

That's the whole story. (Zion's name has a long story behind it too, I'll just have to tell it later.)

Our Adoption Story

We are adopting a daughter from China. And we will be going to bring her home in just a few weeks. Here is the story behind this long and winding road with a steep downhill grade at the end of it... you gotta watch out for that!

I have always wanted to adopt kids since I can remember. When I was little I used to tell my friends I wanted to adopt children. Now fast forward to about 1989-1990 (I'm 19 years old and a sophomore in college). I was watching the academy awards and one of the documentaries nominated was "The Dying Rooms" a BBC documentary about the problem that China's one child policy was causing in China's orphanages (I know that this is a controversial movie and many do not consider it accurate). I saw those little girls and was so moved. I felt a strong connection to them. Maybe that God was letting me know about his plan for me... maybe it's being of Chinese heritage (my dad was born in Taiwan and is racially Chinese).

So that was in the back of my mind for many years. Then in the mid 1990's after being married for a couple of years I stared noticing people who had adopted girls from China. Not too many but enough to stir up those thoughts and emotions that the documentary had planted in me. And I thought "I would like to do that... adopt a girl from China." Bill (my husband) and I had talked about wanting to adopt kids after we had a couple of our own. Well, in 1997 we moved to a bigger house to "start that family", but God had other plans.

We had infertility problems and after about 3 years of "trying", praying, being tested, poked, prodded, timed, drugged, treated, being told "There's nothing wrong with you, you should be pregnant" and lots of tears... we gave up and were about to start to look in to adoption. Then we had a miracle happen. We were pregnant with our son Zion, born 12-2-2000. After he was born and then weaned (about a year) we started on trying for number two. We thought it should be easy since we had done it before... wrong.

After giving it about 3 more years of similar stuff as the previous paragraph (Zion is about 4 at this time). We said enough! It's time to adopt. So in November of 2004 we agreed that adoption was where God was leading us and started to do research.
Research, research, research! Domestic or international, private or agency, open or closed, new-born or waiting child etc. etc.
I again went back to that desire God had planted in me more that a decade before. I knew we had to adopt a girl from China or I knew I would always wish that I had. So now more research... on how to do just that.

So in March of 2005, I sent a request for an info packet from America World Adoption Association (AWAA) and then ultimately on 3-29-05 sent them an application to adopt a daughter from China using their agency. And then the paper chase was on! (Paper pregnancy as AWAA liked to call it.) So for the rest of 2005 it was all about the adoption paperwork. Getting it done, sending it out for certification and authentication and all that. Getting every nook and cranny of our lives evaluated and approved. Finally on January 13, 2006 our Dossier (fancy word for paperwork) went to China! And we were officially logged into China's system on January 27, 2006 (this is called a Log In Date or LID in the adoption community).

We were expecting about a 9 -10 month wait till we got our referral (that's when China matches you with a child, for those who are wondering). 9 -10 months was the typical wait at the time. So we thought, towards the end of the year, maybe before Christmas (2006) we'll have our daughter. So... Now that I no longer had to plow through piles of paper work what was I going to with the wait?! (Besides being a wife and mom of a busy 5 year old... I love you Zion! You too Bill!)... You guessed it... research!!! Those of you who know me know I am an information addict. NPR, books, magazines, Internet... all that.

Well during this research I discovered that there had been a baby trafficking scandal in the Hunan province of China with some of the Children possibly being adopted internationally! (This is disputed, but the orphanage director and several others involved were executed.) I knew that the demand for Chinese girls had gone up, but I still believed the there was a great need for people to adopt these children, so this was shocking. Had I made the right decision? Was what we were doing helping with a problem or contributing to one? More research... I concluded that things were not so black and white China is such and huge country and so diverse that I could not find a simple yes or no. All this put in my mind that maybe we should adopt a Special Needs Child. I knew that there was no demand for them within China. But we were not ready for that yet and felt God had lead us there for a reason we had to stick it out. So now more waiting.

This takes us to about early 2007... still no referral and we had been waiting for over a year. Then in March everything changed. China's Center for Adoption Affairs', CCAA, (which is the government agency that handles all international adoption) referral process came to a screeching halt. What began as about one month's worth of LIDs given referrals every month at the time of the beginning of our process had slowly reduced to about 15 days of LIDs a month. (You can see how this might back things up with thousands of dossiers being submitted every year.) Well in March this number suddenly dropped to 2 days! And what we thought was just a couple more months wait till our referral and than a couple more till we brought her home changed to more than a year to wait still! 3 years if they continued to process only 2 days a month! We called our agency for info on what was going on and prayed for the number of days of LIDs given referrals to go up. It did, but still has not returned to number any where near 30. It usually hovers between 4-7 days of LIDs processed a month.

So after a few more months of hoping and praying for China to move faster. We decide to switch from waiting for a "healthy" (NSN) child to a "special needs" (SN) child since we could do that with out getting out of "line" for our original plan, and ethically I felt better about adopting a SN child. Especially since the demand for NSN children was so great as to clog up the system. We applied to be able to do this at about he end of August 2007 (I can't remember the exact date.) At the time AWAA told us that there were about 100 other people on the list of those interested in adopting a girl age 2 or under with minimal special needs. (That's what we applied for by the way). So at the time I thought "Oh well, that probably won't speed anything up," and then put it out of my mind and went back to waiting.

This takes us to December 2007. We had been in the adoption process, including research, for three years now. I had become accustomed to waiting and starting to wonder if we made the right choice and should we have gone domestic etc. etc. When on 12-7-07, I came home from taking my son to school and there was a message from AWAA's SN family coordinator (FC) saying to call her back she had to talk to us about something. First I thought "Uh oh! Is something wrong with our paperwork?!" Then I remembered an e-mail from the day before saying that AWAA had received some SN referrals and the families who were getting them would be contacted in the next few days. I thought "Could we be getting our referral, is this about our daughter?!?!!!... No way! there are 100 people in front of us."

Well, Lauren our family coordinator did have a referral for us. I could not stop crying and pacing. I didn't know what to do with myself. I wanted to shout to every one "Here's my daughter!", but we had to go through the referral review process first. That took about a week. On 12-14-07, my mom's birthday, we were able to announce that the beautiful 13 month old girl, known as Lu Jia Feng, would be our daughter. We are going to name her XuXu Lynn Denzel (I'll write a post about her name later.)

Side bar... my wonderful mother Willa Marie Lynn passed away after a courageous 5 year battle with cancer on May 2, 2006. Knowing that my mom didn't make to meet her here on earth has been hard.

Here's a little bit about her. She was born on 11-2-06 (estimated by the doctor who examined her). And she was found was found "in the No.5 cabin of N543 Train from Huaibei to Hefei by Hefei Train Station staff Wang Peixiang on Nov. 3, 2006."
Her special need is... she was born without fingers on her left hand. She only has a thumb and partial pinkie there. (She will do great... we know because our beautiful friend and mother of 3, Amy, has only one hand and is amazing!) She lives in the Hefei City Social Welfare Institute (fancy word for orphanage). The blessing is it is a "Half the Sky" orphanage. (I have written way too much... To find out more about that go to www.halfthesky.org). So developmentally she is on track and healthy. Also beautiful, if I may say so... love that smile!


After sending our Letter of Acceptance, LOA, to China on 12-21-07, we got our Pre-Approval, PA, (this just means China is working on you approval) on 1-11-08 and we just got our Referral Approval, RA, on 11-25-08. Just two weeks after getting our PA when our FC said it could take from 2-6-months to get it. I wasn't expecting the RA till AT LEAST the END of February. This is what I meant by a steep down hill at the end of this journey. After such a long wait and uphill battle with faith, emotions and paperwork we are so happy to get to fly down the mountain now. So now what we are waiting for is our Travel Approval, TA. This might happen any where from 1.5 to 3 weeks from now (1-29-08). So we could be leaving for China between February 21st -March 15th. Whew... we've been praying for so long for God to speed things up, praises that he did, I have to admit to being overwhelmed by how fast things are moving now. Lots to do and prepare.

Now that I am actually posting to my blog (I've had it for over 1.5 years just never posted, I type too slow, and I usually don't have the time) I will try to update the news on the journey here and hopefully you can join us in China through the blog.

Blessings to you and stay tuned! Pray for us and our trip and XuXu!

Me and My Loving Family