Big Ren!

It's a rainy, English day here in Nor Cal.  I'm sitting at my desk, watching the raindrops hit my window, wondering how to start this post, which has been slowly brewing inside of me for the past several weeks.

A lot has been progressing behind the scenes in the process to bring our boy home.  Several weeks ago, I got a call from Tiffany, our case manager, who was elated to tell us she got some updates back on our boy.  I was driving in downtown San Francisco when she called, trying to navigate through construction, one-way streets, and cable cars as she told me the latest news on Ren. It was a miracle I didn't crash.

And as it turns out, our little dude...

is not so little anymore...

Big Ren is 15 months old now and is in the 99th percentile for weight (though he was most likely weighed in all of these clothes). He is walking and talking and feeding himself! He is not only pointing to objects he wants, but he is stealing them from the other kids, which means he'll fit in perfectly with Tess and Lu. We submitted several questions to his orphanage/foster family and all of the feedback was great. In their words, he is "smart and cute." We couldn't agree more!

Looking at these photos of him make me light up. I can't help but smile. The joy is unstoppable. It just bubbles up with every glance at him!

As Tiffany and I talked that day, we also realized that there were some glitches with our homestudy, as Ren is slightly older than the age-range we were originally approved for.  Also, his special need fell outside of our approved parameters, so for the past two weeks, I've been working on getting our homestudy revised and resubmitted to our US immigration officer, who will now need to "re-approve" us. More paper-pushing, more $$, but one more step closer to our guy.  

(I've almost got this address memorized)

We don't have any clear dates yet on when we will get him, only that we will most likely be traveling sometime in May--July, right smack-dab in the middle of our move.  The past month has held quite a bit of confusion and uncertainty regarding how we should pray and what we should prioritize.  We've been wondering if it's best to try and get the move done before we bring Ren home, thereby providing him with more stability once we are stateside.  This seemed better than bringing him home to California, only to have to pack up our house and move across the country a few weeks later.  

However, after weeks of trying to get some clear-cut answers from our agency on how our move will impact this adoption process, we feel that God has helped us narrow down our focus.  Long story short, we need to bring Ren home to CA before we move.  If we don't, we'll be required to do a whole new homestudy in our new home in Virginia, which could delay traveling to get him for several months. It could mean the difference between going to get him this spring versus this fall, not to mention that re-doing a homestudy from scratch would be my personal version of living hell.

Since finally pinning down our agency on this matter yesterday, Chris and I feel a sense of urgency and a clear focus on how we need to praying...

Bottom-line: we need to get our boy home.  Stat. 

We are scheduled to move out of our CA home by June 30th, which means we need to be home with Ren from China by then, which means that hopefully, we'll be leaving to get him by the beginning of June at the latest.  In order for this to happen, we need a little piece of paper from the Chinese government called a Letter Seeking Confirmation (LOC).  This document basically means that China officially approves us to adopt Ren.  Once we have our LOC, we will travel about three months later, which means we must get it sometime within the next couple of weeks in order to be on track.

COULD YOU PLEASE JOIN US IN PRAYING FOR THIS?

We feel like this is our top priority right now--to get our boy home--and we will deal with the details of the move after that.  So much of this is out of our control. We are at the mercy of Chinese and American bureaucracies, but we know that God has control over it all...even the multiple rolls of red-tape still before us!

Thanks so much for your prayer and support. We are excited to see God work and so excited to hold our big guy in our arms!