This has been an emotionally exhausting day, but such a joy! I think I have finally settled down a bit and am not all jittery and shaking. I was truly surprised by the phone call this morning. God has given me such an amazing peace during this three month wait since we were first matched with Elijah. All along I figured that it would take the average of about 90 days to receive the call. Guess what?! Yep, it was exactly 90 days today!
A friend called this morning to say that someone else from our agency had received just their acceptance call. I was still thinking that it would probably be another week or so for ours, not wanting to get my hopes up. As soon as I hung up, I told the kids that someone from our agency had received their call. Then immediately the phone rang and Benjamin said, “That’s our call.” Sure enough, it was! There were a lot of happy screams and tears. I only caught about half of what our family coordinator said, so had to call her back later. She is used to it and totally understood. 
So what now? Our agency is overnighting the documents to us to sign, then we will turn them right around and overnight them back so that they are at the agency on Monday, to be sent out to China that day. We will once again have the FedEx man be our stork tomorrow. Wonder if it will be the same guy as was Ami’s stork. Then we sit back and wait for China to issue our Travel Approval, which is taking about three weeks. From there we will likely leave 2-3 weeks after TA. So, we are looking at the end of December or first part of January.
We plan to stop in Japan on the way to China. We’ll just leave a bit early and hopefully spend Christmas there again with my family. Then we will meet up with our travel group when they arrive in China. Or better yet, we could spend an early Christmas in Japan and then meet Elijah FOR Christmas! It’s possible. We’ll just wait and see.
So now we get to tell Elijah that we are his family!! This is the best part. We had just finished preparing his special package yesterday. We included some treats to share with his friends and nannies, as well as a couple of small toys and an MU sweatshirt. We also have the album that we made for him to show him our home and tell him more about each of us. Most importantly we included a letter that Chris and I wrote, and also letters that each of the three older children wrote. They are so precious! I told the kids that they could finally write whatever they had been wanting to say to Elijah all these many months, but had not had the freedom to do so. We had these letters translated and the whole package is now on it’s way to China! We are anxious to hear his reaction.
We thank you for all your prayers and encouragement along the way. God is good. We have clearly seen His hand throughout this whole process. We stand in awe and humbly express our gratefulness to Him for allowing us to bring this special young boy into our family fold. We’re coming, Elijah!! We’re coming!!
Michaela thought to grab the camera when the call came. Not such a pretty face when Mama is crying!
To China With Love
Also included a beach ball globe
Celebrating at our favorite BBQ restaurant
