Travel approval is in!

Hi everyone! So we continue to Praise God for His incredible timing and His provision. We had another person send us a check for $150 so that's almost $2200 raised so far!

Additionally, we got word late yesterday that our travel approval had been mailed and today it arrived! Yaaaaaaaaaa! I found out that we have 90 days from when the travel approval is issued by the Chinese Gov. to travel. The only little hitch in all of this is that right smack dab in the middle of our time frame is the Chinese New Year in which everything shuts down for a week or so. That's on Feb. 14 of this year so we'll either need to go before or in the middle of the Chinese New Year in order to go and get back before 90 days. Chinese New year would be more expensive so we're leaning towards before. We've had to make some very quick decisions but our tentative travel date IS....January 27-Feb. 12th or 13th! Despite the fact that we're still quite a bit short, money-wise, we're going to take a step of faith here and go w/what we feel God laying on our hearts.

What happens from here? Well, I'm glad you asked! What happens from here is that CCAI (our agency) has emailed the US consulate for an appointment time for us. We're thinking we could get that any time next week. Once we have that appt. scheduled, they will then begin making all of the in-China accomodations and we will start to make our travel arrangements and trust that God will provide the rest of the monies needed to bring Jasmine home.

I KNOW! Never a dull moment around here! :-) We're so excited to see how God pulls this all off and can't wait to hold Jasmine in our arms. We appreciate all of your prayers and ask for continued prayers over the 2 outstanding grants as well as the remainder of funds needed to go. We'd also ask for prayers for our health, especially Lily's, during the trip.

Before I go, I wanted to share one more thing. We were at the Doctor's today and on our way out we noticed a TON of pennies scattered all over the floor and parking lot. No one was around that seemed to be looking for them or missing them so we picked them up and counted a total of 97 pennies. Ok, 97 pennies are a lot to just scatter along the ground so we began to "wonder what it means" to each other. Maybe we'll be 97 cents short and this is God's way of providing for our adoption. Who knows? At any rate, I was sharing this with my sister and she said "In God we trust." What? She said that she's heard a number of people who, when they pick up pennies, think of how it says "In God We Trust" on 1 side. Wouldn't that be so like God to let us know 97 times, the day that we get our travel approval, that we can trust Him?! Hmmmmmmmmmmm.