Update on Jasmine!

Hi everyone! It's been a while since we updated you on what's been going on w/our China adoption so here goes!

Some of you may or may not know but this past summer we felt God laying on our heart to move to the "Waiting Child" program w/our China Adoption agency. Basically, this program includes all of the children who aren't "perfect" by society's standards. They are children who might be older in age or have medical issues. Our agency, after evaluating our home, put our file "in line" w/this program and we continue to stay "in line" with the regular program and we wait in both until one or the other calls with a match. We made this switch because we felt God leading us due to our past experience w/the precious little ones that we have had as foster parents. We've parented a number of babies w/medical issues due to drug exposure and felt that perhaps God had been leading us this way all along. Our daughter, Lily, who we adopted through foster care, also has experienced a variety of medical issues and developmental delays that we're continuing to work through. Regardless, this experience and a lot of prayer has been the framework through which we decided to move to this program. Our precious girl will most likely have some medical needs with regards to a cleft lip and/or cleft palatte and will be between 7 months and 2 years old. We have decided to give her the first name of "Jasmine" because she is a precious and beautiful flower as her soon-to-be older sister, Lily, is.

As a result of moving to this program, our time frame for our adoption has sped up from 3 to 7 years to 8 to 10 months! It's exciting because we'll be able to meet our precious Jasmine much sooner but scary because the time frame for raising the rest of our fees also rapidly decreases! Needless to say, we're scrambling to gather the rest of the money needed for our fees. In July of this past year we made the decision to try and sell our house so as to assist with those costs. With the market slowing down considerably, even in our area which has remained fairly steady, we are hoping that we'll be able to get it sold before our match which should occur sometime in February to May of 2009 time frame. Once again, this too is in God's hands and we are completely dependent upon Him.

Once we get our match, we should be traveling within 3 to 6 months to go bring her home! We will be sure to keep this blog updated as our match day gets closer and we'll be utilizing this blog and our Facebooks to keep you all informed as we travel in China to get Jasmine. We'll be posting information as well as pictures as soon as they become available!

Please be praying with us that our house will sell and for our family as we prepare for our new little one! Please be praying that God will help pull together the finances needed to finalize this adoption! Thank you all for your support and prayers and thanks be to God who continues to bestow His Amazing Grace and Love upon us although we don't deserve it!