When we last posted, we had just submitted our pre-approval documents to China. We are very thankful that China did give us their approval to begin the adoption. Another item of praise is that we received enough donations to pay our first agency fee. To those who donated, thank you very, very much. We still do not have the money to pay for our homestudy, but that fee isn't due quite yet, and we know that God will provide in His own perfect time. We are continuing to work on the daunting list of forms that we have to submit to our homestudy agency. We aren't finishing those quite as quickly as we had hoped, but we have been chipping away at them.
One of the truths that God has been making very clear to us through this process is that He is the one who will bring our son home to us. In our own strength, we can do nothing. Our sickness and struggles have reminded us just how weak we are. Our prayer is that God's glory and power will shine all the more clearly because of our weakness. The verse that comes to mind again and again as we pray this is Zechariah 4:6, "Then he said to me, 'This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts.'" We pray that everyone will clearly see that it is only by God's Spirit that our son will come home to us. This verse is even richer to me than it would otherwise be, because Jonathan's middle name is Zechariah.
