Hello, blog readers! I have several updates to tell. But first, I must say that I am clearly not a regular blogger these days. I would love to say I'm going to fix that, starting today, but as soon as I say that, then everything we're working on will consume my time, and three or four months later, I still won't have written another blog post, so at this point, I'm just not making any promises! But I do have good intentions. (:-] I do tend to feel like the time I spend writing a blog could be spent on adoption paperwork, and the paperwork trumps smaller things most of the time, but someone asked me recently if we are still adopting! So okay, I need to update more often than once a year!
Secondly, we have paid our home study fee and we're getting this ball rolling. We wanted, first, to raise as much money as we could before getting started, because if an adoption is not completed within one year of the home study, then the parents will have to pay an extra fee to get the home study updated. When we're already talking about $28,000, avoiding any extra fee that can be avoided is a good thing. We don't have nearly that much yet, but we have extra motivation to get started. For one thing, my daughter is alive, and somewhere without me! She's having happy moments, sad moments, and probably sometimes feeling lonely, and she may not even know she has a family yet, but she does. She needs to meet us, and come HOME. Secondly, we have spent immense amounts time working (and working and Working!), teaching classes, doing photography, computer repair, extra web development (for John), and any other odd jobs we can find to pay for Anna Faith's adoption. And it's been helpful! We've earned and saved thousands already! But in the meantime, when we schedule almost every hour of our day working, it leaves literally no time to do the paperwork to bring her home! So my goal now is to keep working as much as possible, but not to let it stall the paperwork. Please pray for us in this! When we take care of our kids and each other, and finish our work and regular life chores at 10:30pm, there really is no energy left for paperwork. We've got to work it in somehow. I'm writing this blog now as a result of time I have because of the kids needing extra sleep this morning after being sick. On a regular schoolday, we would be having breakfast by now, getting ready to start our school work. I have faith, though, and somehow, some way, I have to make the time to do the paperwork to bring her home. But while I'm not thankful for illnesses, I'm thankful for a seized opportunity.
I have been honestly very Frustrated with our lack of progress. I've been prayerful about it, but just overall extremely frustrated because I feel like Anna Faith is waiting on us, and we're just working and working, but not getting almost any closer! We wanted to bring her home when she was around 5 years old. I thoughts she should be 4-5, while John thought she should be 5-6. So we decided 'around 5' would be just right. When we decided to adopt, Sara was almost 6 years old, and we wanted her sister to be old enough to play with her, but still be younger than Sara so she would get to be a big sister. But when Sara turned 7 in September, I realized something. I think I found a reason to why everything seemed to be taking so long.
First - a brief explanation of one thing. Adopting a healthy baby from China (or even a healthy toddler) takes around 5 years. We do NOT want to wait 5 years. So we decided to go with the waiting child program for a couple of reasons. One reason was obviously the wait. Adopting a waiting child can take closer to one year, maybe a bit more (unless you're like us, and take a year to get the home study done in this case, but I'm getting to that). Still, it would be a much shorter wait. Secondly, we decided not to request a baby or a toddler. In an orphanage, once a child reaches preschool age or older, it gets harder and harder to find them families. We've been blessed to have three babies, and there's nothing in the world I would trade for that. But to think that Chinese girls age out of the orphanage at 14 years old breaks my heart. My oldest child is 14 years old, and he is still a kid! He's a great kid, mind you, but for goodness sake, I cannot imagine moving out and searching for work and a place to live at 14, with no Mom or Dad to call and ask for help or advice! Also, we would really like for Sara's sister to be old enough to play with her. So we decided to request a slightly older child to adopt. But still, she would have to have some sort of mild special need to be on the 'waiting child' list, or it would still take 5 years.
In China, a perfectly healthy child who is 7 years old or older is considered a special needs adoption, simply because it is so hard to find them homes at that age. They have 7 more years to find a family, and then they are on their own. So at 7, they are put on the Waiting Child list,and if a family wants to adopt them, then their adoption is pushed forward much faster. At first I didn't want to adopt a 7-year-old because we hoped Anna Faith would be home before Sara turned 7, and I wanted the birth order of my kids to remain the same. That didn't happen. So now if we request a 7-year-old, then by the time she comes home, Sara will be 8, and she will still be the older sister! While I've been extremely frustrated with the lack of speed in our adoption process this time, I do think this was our God's plan all along. A healthy 7-year-old sister for Sara would fit our family just right.
When she comes home, she will have trouble adjusting, we know. She'll be fluent in Chinese, and will not be accustomed to being part of a family unit, eating with a family, walking along with us and staying with us at the grocery, all those things that our children learn from the time they can walk, talk, and understand what their parents are saying. We have a couple of Chinese friends who can help us talk to her sometimes, and we'll use translator apps on our smart phones to help. Also, Aaron is taking the Rosetta Stone Chinese edition for a foreign language this year, and is doing great with that. But overall, we'll just love her like crazy no matter what, and she'll be ours forever, so she'll have to get used to us. :)
This was a longish update this time. I hadn't posted in a year, people! Next time I'll be sure that even if it's not as soon as I intend, it will definitely not be a year before the next post. In the meantime, please help us pray for our second daughter, Anna Faith Besse, and join us in the faith, hope, and the love it will take to bring her home to her family!
First - we have named our daughter. No, we don't have pictures yet; those will come later. We don't even have the home study done yet. We did fill out some papers and I'm writing my 'autobiography' now so we can get the home study visit underway. But for now, she has a name, and it's Anna Faith. We love the name Anna because it's a beautiful Biblical name, and also because John's sister is named Anna, and due to health reasons, she won't be able to raise any children, but she is a wonderful person, and this way her name can carry on. Faith comes from how much Faith it's taking to get this little girl home. We love how Anna Faith flows together, so we'll likely call her Anna Faith (rather than just Anna), but she will actually have a total of four names, the poor girl. When we adopted Sara, her Korean name was Young Ran, and we kept Young as her middle name, so she is Sara Young Besse. We love that idea, and want to keep a part of our next daughter's Chinese name as well, so she will be Anna Faith (something) Besse. So now we can pray for her by name! I don't know why, but that helps me a lot. I also pray for the other kids in the orphanage, that they'll all learn to be nice with each other, and have enough to eat, and be safe. We pray a lot for the people who care for these kids, that they'll show them compassion and teach them to be sweet and share, and we pray that Anna Faith will somehow know in her heart that her family is coming.
Secondly, we have paid our home study fee and we're getting this ball rolling. We wanted, first, to raise as much money as we could before getting started, because if an adoption is not completed within one year of the home study, then the parents will have to pay an extra fee to get the home study updated. When we're already talking about $28,000, avoiding any extra fee that can be avoided is a good thing. We don't have nearly that much yet, but we have extra motivation to get started. For one thing, my daughter is alive, and somewhere without me! She's having happy moments, sad moments, and probably sometimes feeling lonely, and she may not even know she has a family yet, but she does. She needs to meet us, and come HOME. Secondly, we have spent immense amounts time working (and working and Working!), teaching classes, doing photography, computer repair, extra web development (for John), and any other odd jobs we can find to pay for Anna Faith's adoption. And it's been helpful! We've earned and saved thousands already! But in the meantime, when we schedule almost every hour of our day working, it leaves literally no time to do the paperwork to bring her home! So my goal now is to keep working as much as possible, but not to let it stall the paperwork. Please pray for us in this! When we take care of our kids and each other, and finish our work and regular life chores at 10:30pm, there really is no energy left for paperwork. We've got to work it in somehow. I'm writing this blog now as a result of time I have because of the kids needing extra sleep this morning after being sick. On a regular schoolday, we would be having breakfast by now, getting ready to start our school work. I have faith, though, and somehow, some way, I have to make the time to do the paperwork to bring her home. But while I'm not thankful for illnesses, I'm thankful for a seized opportunity.
I have been honestly very Frustrated with our lack of progress. I've been prayerful about it, but just overall extremely frustrated because I feel like Anna Faith is waiting on us, and we're just working and working, but not getting almost any closer! We wanted to bring her home when she was around 5 years old. I thoughts she should be 4-5, while John thought she should be 5-6. So we decided 'around 5' would be just right. When we decided to adopt, Sara was almost 6 years old, and we wanted her sister to be old enough to play with her, but still be younger than Sara so she would get to be a big sister. But when Sara turned 7 in September, I realized something. I think I found a reason to why everything seemed to be taking so long.
First - a brief explanation of one thing. Adopting a healthy baby from China (or even a healthy toddler) takes around 5 years. We do NOT want to wait 5 years. So we decided to go with the waiting child program for a couple of reasons. One reason was obviously the wait. Adopting a waiting child can take closer to one year, maybe a bit more (unless you're like us, and take a year to get the home study done in this case, but I'm getting to that). Still, it would be a much shorter wait. Secondly, we decided not to request a baby or a toddler. In an orphanage, once a child reaches preschool age or older, it gets harder and harder to find them families. We've been blessed to have three babies, and there's nothing in the world I would trade for that. But to think that Chinese girls age out of the orphanage at 14 years old breaks my heart. My oldest child is 14 years old, and he is still a kid! He's a great kid, mind you, but for goodness sake, I cannot imagine moving out and searching for work and a place to live at 14, with no Mom or Dad to call and ask for help or advice! Also, we would really like for Sara's sister to be old enough to play with her. So we decided to request a slightly older child to adopt. But still, she would have to have some sort of mild special need to be on the 'waiting child' list, or it would still take 5 years.
In China, a perfectly healthy child who is 7 years old or older is considered a special needs adoption, simply because it is so hard to find them homes at that age. They have 7 more years to find a family, and then they are on their own. So at 7, they are put on the Waiting Child list,and if a family wants to adopt them, then their adoption is pushed forward much faster. At first I didn't want to adopt a 7-year-old because we hoped Anna Faith would be home before Sara turned 7, and I wanted the birth order of my kids to remain the same. That didn't happen. So now if we request a 7-year-old, then by the time she comes home, Sara will be 8, and she will still be the older sister! While I've been extremely frustrated with the lack of speed in our adoption process this time, I do think this was our God's plan all along. A healthy 7-year-old sister for Sara would fit our family just right.
When she comes home, she will have trouble adjusting, we know. She'll be fluent in Chinese, and will not be accustomed to being part of a family unit, eating with a family, walking along with us and staying with us at the grocery, all those things that our children learn from the time they can walk, talk, and understand what their parents are saying. We have a couple of Chinese friends who can help us talk to her sometimes, and we'll use translator apps on our smart phones to help. Also, Aaron is taking the Rosetta Stone Chinese edition for a foreign language this year, and is doing great with that. But overall, we'll just love her like crazy no matter what, and she'll be ours forever, so she'll have to get used to us. :)
This was a longish update this time. I hadn't posted in a year, people! Next time I'll be sure that even if it's not as soon as I intend, it will definitely not be a year before the next post. In the meantime, please help us pray for our second daughter, Anna Faith Besse, and join us in the faith, hope, and the love it will take to bring her home to her family!
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