Norman Adoption Blog

A week or two ago on Dec 12th, I felt a strong urge to pray for our little baby girl. But normally when I pray for her I am praying for the birth mother to stay strong, healthy, and to even love her baby. I pray that they will both stay safe and to give the mother peace. But all of a sudden I felt like God was saying now that I should pray as if she were just born. That would mean to pray for wisdom for the mother to know where to bring the baby and for God to comfort her during this time. It could also mean that if anything happened to her parents that caregivers would rise up quickly and take care of her and love her. I still pray for her health and safety. Patrick felt the same urge a week or so before while he was in Chicago.

I know we will find out in time if she was really born at this time, or if she is going to be born shortly. Regardless, there has been an urgency to pray for her. No matter the distance between us, even across the whole world, we are already bound together because God had tied us together through prayer. As long as I am obedient to His bidding, I am with her and helping her because God himself is. It is such a blessing to see how our prayers can make a difference. God can use us by simply lifting our hearts to Him. I hope that the lessons I’ve learned here will take hold so that I can be a praying mother for my children all throughout their life.

Now that the paperwork is heading to Vietnam, I pray that everything will be processed in a timely manner, that nothing too unusual will hinder us, that our hearts and home would continue to be prepared for what is to come, and that our baby would be brought to us in God’s perfect timing. I also pray for blessings, strength, encouragement, and love to be poured out on all those who are caring for our baby in our absence. We should never forget them!

I could not have received any better Christmas gift than the one I got today, in the form of a phone conversation. Today was our scheduled phone meeting with Cindy from Orphans Overseas. Two weeks ago, on December 7, our paperwork from TX was finally received. They didn’t even hesitate and were able to send out our paperwork to get translated that morning. The paperwork was sent to CA to get translated in the Vietnamese Consulate there. She said we could expect 4-5 weeks. She didn’t want to get my hopes up too high, but she told me that they just had a family before us get their paperwork back in record time, total of 2 weeks.

I always pray for God’s perfect timing on this whole issue, because if it were up to me, there would be no waiting. But I also earnestly prayed that God would speed up this part of the process. Well, God is good and hears our prayers. Today was my phone call again from Cindy, who I was expecting would tell me no new news. Instead she said they just got back the paperwork from CA and it is now completely ready to be sent off to Vietnam. That means that this afternoon the dossier will be sent on it’s way, delivered by God and used by God to pick that perfect little angel made just for us.

We now start the dry spell. We have to wait many months before we will probably even hear anything back. Our total waiting time they are estimating to be 4-5 months. We could get our potential referral in a month or two or right before we travel. A family before us waited 3 months before they got their referral, with all the information about their little one, and is going to travel a month or two later. Either way, we need to remember to stay flexible.  Anything can happen at this point.

Not much has changed since my last post.  I just wanted to report that we are still in the authentication process.  The paperwork was sent to MS, LA, and TX.  So far all but TX has returned the paperwork to Orphans.  We don’t know the hold up for TX, but normally it doesn’t take this long.  Hopefully any day they will be getting the paperwork back. Then  it  will be sent straight to get translated.

We have made slight preparations for the baby.  We have a guest bedroom currently where we are planning on putting the new baby.  So we purchased a sofa bed so that we can have grandparents up to stay with us still.  Maybe after the holidays we will get more serious about transforming the room into her new space.  At this point we have been consumed with normal Christmas busyness, including traveling and buying gifts for family.  I am just glad we have something to help make the time go more quickly…