The Unexpected Journey To Our Spiritual Adoption: The view from here‏

Throughout these last couple weeks, there have been some people that we have crossed paths with that have helped make our time special here. I want to share with you some of the people and stories that have inspired us, given us hope, and made us feel like our family here in China is much bigger than we ever thought it would be...

There was the young lady we met at the civil affairs office when completing our adoption. She was with her tiny little daughter who had a congenital heart deformity that would require surgery when she made it back to the states. She told me she was traveling alone and her husband was home with their seven children, 4 adopted domestically and 3 from Ghana. Her Dad would be joining her in Guangzhou to help with the long flight back to the states as her daughter would likely need to be on oxygen in flight and she was eager to have the help. I asked her if she and her husband had to fight over who got to come to China and she said, "pretty much." I told her she was brave and she said, "Brave or stupid." We both laughed about that.

Then there were the multitude of American families that were at the medical checks. One child was missing her legs from her knees down and one arm. One mom had left her husband and three sons back at the hotel room while she completed the check with their Chinese daughter with Down Syndrome. One family in our group is adopting a 2 1/2 year old that is fully deaf in one ear and partially in the other. Of course, there are lots of us with cleft lip and palate children. Many adoptive families stay at the Garden Hotel here in Guangzhou as we all funnel through the American consulate. It has been a time of celebration to take this path together and to share our stories.

There are the Mengels from our agency who will hopefully be traveling in the next two months to pick up their son, Samuel, who is also from our orphanage. We have been in contact with them since receiving our referrals and as soon as they learned we were making a visit to the orphanage, they asked us to keep an eye out for their son. The day of our tour we were almost finished. I was alone in the room where our kids played and I remembered that I was supposed to look for him. I went back to the crib room and there was Samuel who had stayed in the room while the other children had crossed the hall with the nannies to another playroom. It was like he was waiting for me to find him so his Mom and Dad could see his pictures. I snapped some adorable shots of him on a rocking horse. The Mengels were so excited to have the pics that night and I was so happy I found him. It's what we do. Adoptive families. We are always looking forward and backward in what we can do to help each other.

There was the Chinese gentleman who stopped at our breakfast table one morning and said, "You adopting?" He could not take his eyes off Jacob. He then asked if we would be repairing his lip. I said "yes" and he began to cry. He said, "I get very emotional. I'm glad he will go to a good home. You are good to take him." I told him we were blessed. He said, as he touched my shoulder, "Yes, you are blessed."

We met Amy, one of our adoption agency's Chinese coordinators while in Beijing. She was telling us she commutes 2 hours one way to come to work but talked about how much meaning she found in what she does. I asked what she did with her time while on the train and she said, "On the way in, I read my Bible, on the way home, I read something else." She is one of my Chinese sisters in Christ.

There is the family from Washington state that stopped us in the lobby. They are adopting two cleft lip children while here in China, and have one biological son that had it also (they will have a total of 9 children after their time in China- 5 bios, 4 adopted.) The wife told me how jealous she was ours was not yet repaired as she wanted another "crack" at the surgeries from the beginning. We laughed and shared stories and she gave me lots of advice. It is clear they are passionate about the orphan and feel God has called them to bring home their children. Their stories of God's faithfulness brought tears to my eyes.

There are many of you who have emailed from home. Sending me pictures and telling me stories that have made us remember that we would be home soon and that we would be loved. Thank you. For as good as our time together has been in China, our hearts have pined for the familiarity, family, and friends that home promises.

Of course, the ones I have met that have left the greatest impressions are the orphans themselves. There was the little boy in Jacob's orphanage that sat in a tiny chair looking forlorn in the corner. He had been dropped off that day by a police officer. I'd say he was about 3, my biological son's age. Each orphan we have met on the street, in our travel group, or in the hotel lobby has a story. Some come from rich foster environments and others from cold environments where they lived in terror. They are all survivors and I respect each one of them and pray they will thrive in their new homes.

The experiences have been rich with love as well as pain. It is clear that God wants to set the lonely in families (Psalms 68:6) and meeting some of those families has given me fuel and inspiration for the journey ahead. We are not alone. We are sisters and brothers who want to serve in an arena God has called us to. It is not easy, and some of the kids we have seen will have much longer roads than others. We are blessed with what God has revealed to us while here about His nature and about His people.