Good afternoon from Hong Kong

Hi everyone! WE MADE IT!!!! Yea God! Despite a few pretty scary-hang-on-to-Jesus-turbulence moments, we made it safe and sound. Lily did fantastic on the trip so thank you all for your prayers! She really was a trooper and despite how tired she was, the meltdowns were minimal so I'd say that was one of our miracles for the day for sure. I've also got to say that Singapore Air is a first class airline all the way! They gave us hot, wet towels for our faces right after take-off and before landing, yummy food in between, & great snacks. The seats were a little tight but our first 15 hour international flight experience couldn't have gone much better.

We arrived in Hong Kong around 7 am on Thursday - 15 hours a head of Colorado! What a trip to be essentially emailing and calling from the future! :-) At any rate, we were able to hook up w/our CCAI guide, Matthew, who took us right to the hotel and got us checked in early. He's arranged for us to take a 1/2 day bus tour tomorrow of Hong Kong which will be fun. On Saturday, we're going to be really ambitious and take the train(s) to Disneyland. Being here has been quite the culture shock, not so much race-wise but we've felt very intimidated about being in a foreign country where we have to be extremely careful of drinking their water and eating some of the foods. We literally feel like we're putting ourselves in God's hands and literally having to trust Him for His provision.

On the humorous side, we had kind of a funny experience while walking along Victoria Harbour, which is just blocks from our hotel. We had been told by our former social worker that the Chinese people are fascinated w/blond haired little girls and that they'll often just come up and pick them up, hug on them, or whatever. Well, we were walking along Avenue of the Stars which is the Hong Kong equivalent of the Hollywood walk of fame. As we were walking we came up on a large group of Chinese women who were posing for a picture. When they caught sight of Lily, they all came rushing up (like she was a movie star) and started taking pictures of her, and taking turns picking her up to pose one-on-one with her. If we hadn't been prepared for that, we would have been a little freaked out but the ladies were all very sweet and Lily, of course, was in her element! Jim had our video camera at the time, so I couldn't get this on video (this time) but I do have a few pics that I'll be posting of some of these precious women.

At any rate, we're now back in our hotel room, trying to stay awake until we can have a light dinner and go to bed so I'm going to cut this short for now. I'd like to get some of these pictures uploaded before I lose steam. We'll have more adventures to share tomorrow but for now we want to continue to thank you all for your support and prayers! This has been such an incredible journey (in more ways than one) and you have all made such an incredible difference in our lives. Enjoy the pictures and definitely email us! Thanks for the continued prayers for the final provisions and for our health and safety! We appreciate you all more than you know! Talk to you soon.

Good morning from San Francisco!

Hi everyone. Well, the miracles for today so far are we landed safely in San Francisco, they did NOT lose our luggage & the hotel let us check in early! Yea God! We have been hanging out in our hotel since early this morning, eating, swimming and sleeping! Jim has to keep pinching me because I still can't believe that we are ON OUR WAY to get our new daughter!

I tried to upload a mini-video from this morning but am having trouble figuring it ou. I'll keep trying and let you know if I have any success. Thanks to all of you who are praying for us! We have felt your prayers and are especially thankful as this next leg - from San Francisco to Hong Kong at midnight is going to be especially brutal. Please pray that we would all (especially Lily & Jim) be able to get decent sleep on the plane. 15 hours is daunting but even in this, we are trusting God to watch over us and provide His strength. Talk to you soon!

Miracles of the day....

Hi everyone. So today, I asked God to invade my day and do what He wants to do today. I wanted to share with you all what God did today. We've been praying for Jim's co-worker who's adopting 2 little girls from Haiti and today we found out that the 2 girls are now in CO w/their forever family! Praise God for that miracle! Then we had another precious co-worker give Jim $250 towards our adoption. Once again, praise God for His incredible provision! Finally, after posting what I thought was one of my worst postings ever (lack of sleep has hampered my brain and ability to communicate), I heard from several people that they felt encouraged. Yea God! When we are weak, He is strong! I can't wait to see what God does tomorrow! We'll try and post some more once we get to San Francisco but continue to Praise Him for His faithfulness and provision. Thank you all for your prayers and support and we'll talk to you soon!

1 DAY!!!!!

Wow! I can hardly believe that we leave early in the morning! Somebody pinch me! :-) We're pretty much done w/all of our packing. We were up late last night and Saturday night refining our packing. Thank God we had started packing weeks ago! We wouldn't have had any sleep this weekend otherwise.

In addition to getting packed, we had yet another incredible time at church yesterday. We went to church, struggling again with whether or not the rest of the monies needed would come in and wondering how God would provide and were reminded AGAIN of how small our faith is and how big God is. Our Pastor said that "worry is a declaration that we don't trust God." Ouch. It's funny but I don't have a problem believing that God can do miracles for other people, but when it comes to myself, it's a whole other story. He's certainly challenging me on that one this year! We've had miracle after miracle despite all of the heartaches. I believe that this past year for us was all about a deepening in our relationship w/Jesus. Our adoption of Jasmine is exciting for sure but not even as exciting as getting to know Jesus better and deepening our characters. Our journey to Jasmine has turned into a journey to Jesus and I can't wait to see how He continues our story with Him!

One of the many miracles that we've experienced since we have attended this church is how God has been speaking to us. Each week, we've gotten filled up, healed, encouraged, supported and lifted up. Yesterday was no exception and I wanted to share with you some of how God encouraged us (yet again). We had again just an incredible time in worship and I wanted to share a couple of the songs with you. One of them is "Let God Arise" by Chris Tomlin.

"Hear the holy roar of God resound
Watch the waters part before us now
Come and see what He has done for us
Tell the world of His great love

Our God is a God who saves
Our God is a God who saves

Let God arise
Let God arise
Our God reigns now and forever
He reigns now and forever

His enemies will run for sure
The church will stand, she will endure
He holds the keys of life, our Lord
Death has no sting, no final word"

We have seen Him part those waters for us, time and time again in 2009 and now in 2010. He has saved us in so many ways and so for us, this was such a great reminder of all that God has done on our behalf and WILL continue to do. He WILL NOT leave us hanging! Praise God!

"God Be Praised" by Desperation Band was another song that really encouraged us yesterday. My favorite part is "Out of ashes You, lifted us. To the table You came and filled our cups. Every heart and soul, All we are and more, Praise the Lord." In some ways, we're continually reminded of what we came from but how God has restored and filled what was taken away. We feel so incredibly thankful for His faithfulness in our lives in every way.

"Across the earth we see, worshippers believe.
Hear our song,
Praise to our God, praise to our God.

From dawn to dusk we'll be, lifting up our King.
Hear our song,
Praise to our God, praise to our God.

Bringing honor to Your majesty,
There's no other like the King of all Kings.

God be praised,
All the glory to Your awesome name,
All creation rising up to say we know,
Our God reigns.

Our broken lives were changed, when You broke the night with day.
Hear our song,
Praise to our God, praise to our God.

Bringing honor to Your majesty,
There's no other like the King of all Kings.

God be praised,
All the glory to Your awesome name,
All creation rising up to say we know,
Our God reigns.

God be praised,
All the glory to Your awesome name,
Though the earth will shake and battles rage we know,
Our God reigns.

Out of ashes You, lifted us.
To the table You came and filled our cups.
Every heart and soul,
All we are and more,
Praise the Lord.

God be praised,
All the glory to Your awesome name,
All creation rising up to say we know,
Our God reigns."

The other one I wanted to share is "Savior" by Desperation Band. I've shared this before but God has really used these lyrics to really heal our hearts after leaving our old church. He reminded us once again that He is all of these things to us and will continue to be.

"I have seen with my own eyes your faithfulness, oh, God.
I refuse to believe the lies that war against my soul.
You rescued me from all my fears, and loosed the chains of
wasted years.

You're my Savior, restorer, rebuilder, rewarder.
My refuge, redeemer, defender, my healer, Savior

Now my heart is overwhelmed by all sufficient grace.
For I have found my weaknesses become your perfect strength.
You rescued me from all my fears, and loosed the chains of
was - ted years.

You're my Savior, restorer, rebuilder, rewarder.
My refuge, redeemer, defender, my healer, Savior

Behold the One who holds me in His hands.
The God who comes and turns my mourning
into dance.

You're my Savior, restorer, rebuilder, rewarder.
My refuge, redeemer, defender, my healer, Savior"

Wow! How amazing is He, that He, the God of the universe, takes so much time and effort to come alongside of us and encourage us?! How humbling and amazing!

The last thing I wanted to share is that one of the things that our pastor encouraged us to do every day this week was to invite God to invade our lives and to expect miracles. I have to say that I can't wait to see what kinds of miracles God will do this week as we depart for China! Interesting timing, don't you think?! I'll leave you all with this scripture which I think will be our theme for our trip, Philippians 4:19 "And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus." He will meet our financial needs, our emotional needs, our need for sleep and health, our spiritual needs and any other need I can't think of. Amen to that!

Thank you all for your prayers and encouragement! This continues to be an exciting adventure and we love that you are all a part of it with us. Talk to you soon!

Our Itinerary

Hi everyone! It's hard to believe we're only 3 days away from leaving for China! Yea God! I posted a copy of our itinerary below the pics of Jasmine so you all have an idea of what we'll be up to while we're there. Again, we're hoping to post updates almost every day (other than when on the plane) so you can all see what we're up to. We'll be finalizing all of our packing this weekend and then we'll be off early on Tuesday morning! We've had 2 more gifts of $125 come in towards our adoption - you all rock! We are so incredibly thankful for how God is providing in our journey to Jasmine! Between adopting Lily and now Jasmine, we have had the most amazing journeys and wouldn't change a thing with how God has knit our family together. Well, I'm off to do the last loads of laundry before we leave and then clean, clean, clean! Who says I don't know how to have fun?! :-) We love and miss you all and we'll talk to you soon!

New provision...

Hi everyone. Praise God for His great timing and provision! We had $1200 come in yesterday and today for our adoption and I finally slept last night! Only $6300 to go! Thank you all for your prayers on our behalf! We're still praying for the grant agency to come through but we'll see what God does. Either way, we're incredibly thankful and grateful that God loves us and Jasmine enough to provide for us and are trusting Him for the rest. We are truly humbled and blessed. I can't believe we're 5 days away from leaving for China! Our official pick up date of Jasmine is 2/1. 1 week from Monday, I'll be holding our new daughter in my arms and kissing her precious cheeks. It seems so surreal to even say that! I wonder all the time if she's getting lots of love from her foster mom, are they showing her our pictures, etc? How will she react when she sees us? Will she be scared, shy, upset, happy? I can't wait to see Lily's face when she sees Jasmine in person for the first time. How will she react, etc? Amazing! Our God is so good and I can't imagine our lives without Him. To give us two amazing and precious girls - what an incredible gift!

Thank you all again for all of your prayers and encouragement on our behalf! We thank God for all of you as well and may God bless each one of you in a special way for the role you have played in our adoption! We'll continue to keep you posted and talk to you soon!