Happy Birthday Jasmine!

Hi everyone! We just wanted to wish our precious girl a Happy 1st Birthday today! We wish we were there to celebrate with you but we'll make up for lost time when we see you. :-)

We hope the new year continues to find you all doing well. We're kind of in wait mode right now. Our agency has had groups leave for China almost every day this week so we're hoping that, with most of those groups on their way, we'll be able to hear back on our in-China reservations and expenses. We have our to-China flights and hotels booked so we're set there. We have almost everything we need for our trip and have started to pack so we're doing good there. We're also continuing to wait on all 3 grant agencies to see if any will come alongside of us as we still have $5k (approx.) left to raise. We may not hear back from any until we leave so it will, once again, be an interesting and exciting faith step!

One other thing that we've put in motion is that we will be dedicating Jasmine on March 7th at the 9am service at our church. Jeff, the pastor that has been a huge source of encouragement and wisdom for us w/our old church, has agreed to pray over us and Jasmine at that service. They do baby dedications on the first Sunday of every month and sometimes will have multiple families dedicating babies at once. We can't wait to finally be able to physically lift our daughter to God before the whole church and dedicate ourselves to raising her to love Jesus! What a privilege we've been given! :-) If you're in town, come and join us! Otherwise, we'll try and post some pics and video of that time so you all can enjoy with us! :-)

In other parts of our lives, our church has had 10 prayer meetings this week - 6:30 am & pm to usher in the new year. They've asked us to try and attend 5 but we can only go to 3 (tonight being the 3rd). It has been the MOST incredible prayer & worship times I've EVER experienced! We've prayed for the church, the city, the nation, the sick, etc. It's been so incredibly powerful and I can't wait to see what God does out of all of this. We've already seen God do some powerful miracles in our lives in 2009 and can't wait to see what He does in 2010!

Lily has had a great week back to preschool. We were able to get her a spot for next year as well so we're really excited about that. This staff has been incredible and we've really seen Lily grow emotionally by leaps and bounds, especially in this last month or two. Her teachers tell us she's very smart (but, of course!) and by attending preschool for 1 more year, emotionally she'll be ready for kindergarten by the following year. She misses the cut-off for kindergarten next year by only 15 days so maybe it's a blessing in disguise. She's also been getting excited to go to China and get her sister. It's so precious to hear her talk about the things she wants to do or show her sister! God is so good!

Well, that's the latest and greatest with us. We continue to thank God and pray for all of you and can't wait to share our precious girl with you all! Talk to you soon!