TA and Travel Dates!

It has been nearly a month since I posted, and things have been very busy here for us.

Both Isabelle and Hallie are healing well, and their casts are off. Hallie already had her two week follow-up appointment, and the doctors said that she looks great. She doesn't need any therapy (YAY!!), and is back to normal now. Isabelle got her cast of yesterday. She is stiff and sore, but we expect that to improve quickly now. 

 No more casts!!!

Several people even sent gifts to help us with the cost of the girls' medical bills, and that was a huge answer to prayer. Thank you very much!

Now, the news about Jonathan -- we got our travel approval from China, and we will leave on June 10th!!  We are very excited and very nervous at the same time. We will meet him on June 13th, and complete his adoption on June 14th.

We also have very good news about our fund-raising. Our friends' Jogging for Jonathan fundraiser raised just about $2000, and several other donations have come in as well. Some other friends of ours recently contacted us and told us that they will be making a very large donation around the beginning of June. Thanks to these gifts, we are only $5000 short of the funds that we need now! We can't believe it! Just a few weeks ago, we still needed $19,000, and it all seemed impossible. Now we are only $5000 away. Please pray that God will provide the rest of the money that we need, and that He will help us be ready to fly to China four weeks from today. There is a lot that still needs to happen in that time!

Amazing Friends!!

One of the things that we have always been thankful for during our adoption journey is that we have amazing friends and community support. We have shared before some of the ways that they have taken care of us during our adoption journeys, and we will never be able to express how much we appreciate them.

Three of our friends from church are supporting us in a new and wonderful way, and I am excited to share it. Sarah, Jamie, and Megan are all running races in two weeks, and they have decided to dedicate these races to Jonathan. They have set up a gofundme page and are asking people to sponsor their races to benefit Jonathan's adoption. https://www.gofundme.com/joggingforjonathan

I am always impressed by runners to begin with. I can't even run a full mile, so the idea of running 13 or 26 miles is just more than I can imagine. These are three very special women, and I thank God for allowing me to be friends with them. I admire them and treasure their friendship.

Thank you to all three of you, and to everyone who is supporting you as you run for our son, Jonathan.

Good news, prayer request, and another broken bone

No, I'm not kidding. We really do have another broken bone. Our kids were upstairs playing "swimming pool" today, and when Matthias pretended to do a cannon ball, he landed right on Isabelle's leg. She cried pretty hard, but I assumed she was just scared. I held her for a few minutes, and she seemed fine, so I left the room. A little bit later, Greg told her to use the bathroom, and as soon as she stood on it, she burst into tears again. It turns out that she broke the bone in her lower leg, and she will now be in a cast for four weeks. I guess having one child in a cast just wasn't enough. :-) We keep trying to remind ourselves that it could be a lot worse, and at least our girls are home with us so that we can care for them during this time. It just seems unreal.

The good news is that we got our Article 5. Yay! The next step will be our travel letter from China, and that should come in about a week.

And that brings us to the prayer request. As you know from our last update, we are still about $19,000 short of the money we need. We really do believe that God is going to provide all that we need, but we don't have any idea when or how. Once we get the travel letter, we will have a three month window in which we can travel to China to bring Jonathan home. From what we understand, we can travel as early or late as we want in that window, but we have to choose dates very soon after we get the travel letter. For Jonathan's sake, we want to travel as early as possible. But we feel like we can't choose an early date when we don't have the funds yet. Please continue to pray that God will provide for us soon and that we will have peace while we wait. But in addition to those things, we need you to pray that God will give us wisdom. We are willing to follow wherever He leads, and we are willing to travel as early or late as He wants us to. But we don't have any idea how to know what He wants, and we need His help to discern His will. We know that He delights to give wisdom to His children when they ask, so please join us in asking for that now.

Prayer requests and Praise

As always, we thank you so much for your prayers and support. We have seen God answer many of those prayers along the way, and we are still waiting for Him to answer the others.

Our first item of praise is that Hallie is doing great! She had surgery just over two weeks ago to repair her broken finger, and she is in a bright pink cast up over her elbow. Leading up to her surgery, I was actually sick to my stomach because I was so worried about her. I wished so much that I could take the pain for her! For about 48 hours after surgery, she was clearly in pain. She never cried, but she couldn't get comfortable and was very clingy with me. I hate the fact that she can't express the things she is feeling! It makes me feel so helpless as a parent. Since getting through those first few days, she has been fine. She loves to have people sign her cast, and she is eager to show it off. We put a "cast" on her Baby Cinderella, and then she insisted that her Care Bear needed one too. For a non-verbal child, she can be pretty bossy. :-) She will go back to the doctor in two weeks to have the cast removed and the pins pulled out of her finger. We would appreciate prayers for that, because I think she is going to be terrified of the cast saw. I plan to watch some YouTube videos of cast removals before she goes, and we will probably practice taking Baby Cinderella's cast off, but I still think it will be hard for her.

Second item of praise is that we have all the money we need for our matching grant. Yay!! We don't know who the donors are, but we know that we have met our total. To anyone who gave toward that, thank you, thank you, thank you!!

And now for the prayer requests. We are just over a month away from travel, and we are still about $19,000 short of the total amount we need. That is terrifying!! Whenever we look at that total, Greg and I can both feel our hearts begin to panic. It truly seems impossible to raise that amount of money in one month. But we are both thankful that we serve a God who can do "immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine"! We know that He has called us to this work, and He will provide everything we need to accomplish it. Please pray that our hearts and minds will stay fixed on Him. We are waiting to hear back about two grant applications, and we are nearly ready to submit another. Please pray that God will grant us favor with these organizations. And please pray that He will move the hearts of people to help us in this work. Again, we want to say thank you to all of you who have already given to help us with this. We have raised more than half the money we need for this adoption, and many of you have helped us get to that point. Please just don't stop praying for us now! We are both striving to thank and praise Him for His provision, even though we can't see it yet. Also, please pray for our new son. In just over a month, he will lose everything in the world that is familiar to him, and he will have to start over with a new family, new country, new language, new culture, etc. We know that this will be a huge blessing to him, but I feel pretty certain that it won't feel like a blessing at first. Pray that God will prepare his heart and help him through that difficult transition. 

A time of challenges

As the title indicates, these last few weeks have been really challenging for us as a family. God is providing blessings and encouragement in the midst of those challenges, and we thank Him for that, but we both feel pretty tired and worn down.

One of the biggest sources of encouragement has been that Jonathan's process has continued to move forward. We hit so many unexpected difficulties during the first few steps of his process, that it is a bit of a surprise that everything is moving so well now. We did sign and return the LSC, so he is now officially matched with us in the eyes of the Chinese officials. We just submitted our next set of forms to immigration. Also, donations have continued to come in for his adoption. We know that some funds have been donated to our matching grant, but we aren't sure exactly how much. Greg just wrote to ask for an update on our account, but we don't have that yet. We will update you when we do. A few more donations have also come in to his Shepherd's Crook account. We are still far short of the amount we need to bring him home, but God has faithfully provided this far, and we know we can trust him to provide the rest of what we need. We should be traveling to bring our son home in about two months now. That is an exciting and terrifying thought! :-)

Many of you know that my father was diagnosed with cancer right after the beginning of the year. This has been very difficult for our whole family. His long-term prognosis is very, very good, but the logistics of getting him the treatment that he needs are pretty complicated. Both of my parents will be moving to Knoxville, TN for the month of April, and they will be taking 19 special-needs children and teens with them. I have spent a great deal of my time trying to help my mother put the pieces in place to make this move possible, and Greg and I have been keeping their kids for them so that they can go to the appointments that my dad needs. We will be keeping their kids for five nights starting on Easter Sunday, so we would appreciate your prayers during that time. We are unbelievable thankful that my father is not any sicker, and that he should make a full recovery, but we are also tired and drained from the extra challenges that this has brought.

Greg has been working very long hours over the past few weeks, because he has to rebuild the Shepherd's Crook Website completely before we leave for China. He is not getting nearly enough sleep, but continues to have a good attitude about everything. I have learned quite a bit from him in this area.

About two weeks ago, I was driving on the interstate in the rain when the truck in front of me dropped something. By the time I saw it, it was too late to avoid it, and it shredded my front passenger tire. 

Thankfully, I was not hurt, and none of the children were in the car with me. We found out after we replaced the tire that it had also torn up the catalytic converter, so that had to be replaced as well.

Then, the kids were playing outside yesterday, and one of the other children dropped a rock on Hallie's hand. As soon as we saw it, we could tell that it was really bad, so we took her the doctor.

Another sign of God's grace is that Hallie's primary doctor was in the office and had an opening exactly when we needed it. We were concerned that if Hallie had to see a doctor that didn't know her very well, he or she might not realize how serious the situation was. Like many former orpans, Hallie does not cry when she is in pain, and her doctor has learned to read her pretty well. He agreed with us that it looked pretty bad, so sent us to Children's Hosptial to have it X-rayed. X-rays confirmed that it was broken in two places, and one of the breaks is bad enough that she will need surgery.

They sent us to the Emergency Department to have a splint put on her hand until we can make an appointment with orthopedics. Greg and I kept reminding each other that nothing happens outside of God's control, and that this was somehow part of his plan for our family. Neither of us can imagine how we can fit a surgery into our over-filled life, and we don't know how we are going to pay these medical bills. We are thankful for our insurance, and this means that two of our children will have met their deductibles in the first quarter of the year. That might be a record, even for us.

We appreciate the support of our community and friends during this time. They have been a constant source of encouragement to us. They continue to remind us of God's love and provision during this difficult time, and we can't wait to celebrate with all of you once Jonathan comes home. Please continue praying for us. Thank you all.

Two Bits of Good News

It's been a long time—much too long—since I've posted here, and I hope it won't be this long before I post again. We have two pieces of good news to share today:

1. Our LSC (Letter Seeking Confirmation) has been issued from China and is on our way to us! This means that our process is still moving forward. Even though China has already pre-approved us to adopt Jonathan, we will be officially matched with Jonathan once we sign and return the LSC. Our agency had been hoping it would be issued before Chinese New Year, and we barely squeaked in before that deadline, as that holiday is this coming Monday. Praise God for this!

2. We got word last week that we were approved for a $2,500 matching grant through God's Grace Adoption Ministry! That was a HUGE encouragement to us, as we still need a lot of money to bring Jonathan home. If you'd like to help us reach that $2,500 goal (with GGAM's matching portion, this could result in a total of $5,000 for our son's adoption), you can go to their support page. Just be sure to select our names in the Who would you like to help? field. (We're listed as Greg & Kristie Godwin- Ohio.)

Kristie has continued to research items (books, stress-relief objects, etc.) that might help Jonathan with his transition to our admittedly crazy family. She might have more to say about that sometime later. For now, we're thanking God for the LSC and the matching grant. We're still working on other grant applications, and we'll keep you posted on those as we hear back.

Greg

DTC!!

I meant to post this a few days ago, but with the craziness of the holidays, I didn't get a chance to update everyone. Our dossier is finally on its way to China!! After so many weeks of fighting for the papers that we needed, our completed dossier was mailed out on Tuesday. That was two days past our deadline, but the Chinese officials agreed to grant us a few days grace, so everything is fine. We are thanking and praising God that he moved all of the obstacles and allowed us to continue Jonathan's adoption. The hardest part of the adoption is now behind us (except for continued fund-raising), and now we wait for China. As we celebrate Christmas this year, it is hard to know that Jonathan is so far away, but this will be the last Christmas that he ever has to spend alone. As always, thank you all for your support.