LOA!!!!!!!!!

After 132 days of waiting since we submitted our LOI (Letter of Intent) to adopt Eden, we finally, FINALLY, received our LOA today! This is what we've been waiting for because now we can move forward and apply for travel approval and file all of Eden's immigration paperwork.

It has been agony waiting this long, just sitting on our hands, not able to do anything to progress the adoption and knowing she is out there. Now we're looking at about 3 months til we're on that plane :)

When Love Takes You In

I myself don't have a high tolerance for sap, but please indulge me here. SCC has a gift for expressing things that are hard to find words for and I have an even deeper appreciation for their family's story after the tragedy they endured last year.

Her Name Is Eden

First of all, thank you to all for being so diligent about keeping up with our process, asking us how things are going, and if our LOA (Letter of Acceptance) has arrived yet. It really means a lot to us to know you're involved and helps to remind us that we are not alone.
I spoke with Holt about 2 weeks ago and they said they had contacted the CCAA (Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs) to find out where our LOA was. They were told our dossier was still in the translation department and maybe by the end of October or early November we would get it! So we're praying it's soon, but still know that there are no guarantees.
I had posed the name Eden to Paul months ago and he wanted time to mull it over and make sure it felt right. Well, after holding out on me for a few months he finally told me on Sunday, "Okay, it's Eden." :) We will keep her Chinese name, Qinying, as her middle name and now have to work on getting Malia to call her Eden. We've been referring to her as "baby sister Qinying" for the last few months so she's a little confused about who Eden is.

Want to Challenge Yourself? Try Learning Mandarin!

Since Qinying will have only heard Mandarin in her young lifetime, Eliza and I figured it would be good to try to pick up some basic language skills before venturing out to meet her. Yikes! Mandarin is really hard to learn. The tones are hard to pick up. After our first Rosetta Stone lesson, we sound ridiculous... but we're going to keep trying. Anything we can do to try to connect with Qinying as quickly and smoothly as possible is worth the effort.

So for now, 再见 (goodbye).

All the articles and stories I've read on adoption websites and heard from other adoptive parents tell of the moment they saw their first picture of their child, of how they knew it was their son/daughter. So I naturally had that in my mind as how it was supposed to happen for me when I first saw my daughter.

As I anxiously opened the email from the agency that had her picture, my finger held the little white arrow over the attachment as I prepared myself for my big revelation. I opened it. I looked at it. "Oh, a Chinese baby." She was adorable, she was precious. But no fireworks going off in my head, or instant connection being formed. I was wondering what this meant.

Paul and I decided to take the route of praying about her and thinking about her over the 24 hours we had to make a decision and seeing if any red flags came up in our minds. None did, and as I spent the day going over her medical records with doctors and researching cleft palate programs, staring at her picture between phone calls, a connection slowly started to form. Already I was being a mother, learning about her medical condition and trying to figure out the best way I can help her.

Now it's been a week since we were matched with her, and our bond is growing. It really is excruciating, not having her here with us and having no idea when we can go get her. For now we are trying to make the most of our time with Malia and trusting that God has perfect timing, just as He's always had.

What's in a Name?

So I showed the Chinese characters for "Qin Ying" to a Chinese friend, and he translated it as "fragrance of cherry blossom." It's beautiful. We plan to keep it as a middle name. We're still discussing a first name to give. Any suggestions? :)

Ai Yai Yai

It didn't take long before we hit another snag.

It turns out that the next step is to wait for China to respond to our Letter of Intent to Adopt by sending us a Letter of Acceptance. Nothing else can happen until we receive this. The only problem is we don't know how long it will take to hear from China. It could be 45 days at the fastest. It could also be 6 months... gulp!

So I spoke too soon on the timeline. We have at least 45 days to wait before we can process any further paperwork and then plan the trip to meet Qinying (an additional 2-3 months).

It's harder now to wait. We've seen her picture. We imagine all of the developmental stages we want to be a part of. She's no longer an abstraction. She's a real person.

Sigh... This is going to take patience.

The Long-Awaited Call Has Arrived

It has been more than a month since our dossier was completed and sent in, and we were just in a holding pattern, getting antsy for the phone call from the adoption agency, Holt. Yesterday morning that call finally arrived.

We were informed about a 10-month-old girl from central China named Jiang Qin Ying. My Chinese friend tells me that her name probably means "hardworking" and "excellent." The name was given to her at the orphanage since she was anonymously left at the Child Welfare office's front doorstep, swaddled in a blanket with a bottle as her sole possession. She was approximately 2 days old.

Yesterday Eliza and I spend the evening discussing this moment and our big decision. Is Qin Ying our daughter? I'm going to let Eliza fill in more of the detail, but in brief, the answer is YES!

So the journey continues, now at a much more accelerated and anxiety-producing clip. We appreciate our dear friends and family who have been walking alongside us all along. It's about to get really exciting...

the Waiting Game

It's been a while since we've posted...we've hit that place where we are just waiting for "the call" from the agency saying they have a child for us. We actually got a call in early May for a child referral, but we ended up passing because the little girl they had was a month younger than Malia. After some thought, we had decided it would be complex for their relationship to be so close in age and should probably go with a child who is at least a school year younger.

It's hard to "pass" on a child, as if it were a car in the wrong color, or that dessert you're now too full to have. But we've been trying to heed advice from our social worker that if we're feeling overwhelmed before the child even gets here, that's not a good sign. The agency really does want you to think very carefully about what you feel you can handle and what would work well for your family. They want to set you up to succeed, as far as can be determined at least.

So now we continue to wait. I can't complain. We are not waiting nearly as long as families in the standard China process, which is now taking 3-4 years before you are matched with a child. But after hearing in April that we would be matched in 1-3 months, we had gotten pretty excited and ready for things to happen that quickly.

We are constantly being reminded that God has perfect timing. He knows things we don't, and will bring her to us when the time is right. We do trust that, even though our thoughts continue to drift towards our daughter-to-be, who is somewhere in China even as I write this. We pray for her, that someone is caring for and loving her well.

Child of Promise part 2

Another little pitch for the China Child of Promise option...yesterday our adoption agency, Holt, matched a group of families going through the standard adoption process with China. These families matched had dossiers (paperwork) completed and logged on March 3, 2006! They've waited for over 3 years to get matched. I can't even imagine waiting that long.

I spoke with someone at Holt today and found out that since we are open to a child with cleft lip/palate, our current wait time to get matched is 1-3 months tops. Wow, that took our excitement to another level! Another piece of good news is that we found out that this certificate of citizenship Paul and I have been bemoaning in this blog, is not even needed! The guidebook with all the processes states you need it, but a staff person at Holt told us that there have been a few cases where people lost their certificates and just wrote a letter explaining their situation and included a copy of their U.S. passport and the Chinese government accepted it. Ugh, on one hand all that worry and stress for nothing, but more importantly, we don't have to be held back by it anymore!

So now, because there are so many available children with cleft lip/palate, it looks like we can get matched pretty soon after we get our dossier in. All we are waiting on for that is the approval of our I-800A application (immigration services pertaining to suitability to adopt).

This was just the information I needed to encourage me today. It has been a stressful few months where all I could see was a long paper trail ahead of me. Thank you Lord.

Child of Promise

Our agency, Holt International, continues to give us the impression that a match could happen pretty quickly, especially now that our home study is approved. If you're wondering why it seems to be going so fast relative to the long saga other adoptive parents face, it's because we're part of a special program called the Child of Promise (click to read more).

By the way, I got my appointment at Immigration Services for my Certificate of Citizenship interview. Unfortunately, it falls during a week that I'll be in China for business travel. Gettting this Certificate is on the critical path to finalizing our adoption, so we're praying that we can get a different interview date scheduled soon.

Home Study

Last week we had our two Home Study visits with our social worker from Holt. The Home Study is basically where they come see where you live and how you live, and find out all about you and your family. The agency wants to get to know you better and make sure there aren't any red flags that come up, and the Chinese government wants to see it as well so they can get an understanding of the families who are adopting their children.
It's interesting, some potential red flags in the eyes of the Chinese government are: 1) spanking as a discipline philosophy and 2) going to marital counseling. The agency however, doesn't have a problem with these and just leaves these details out of your Home Study if they apply to you and they think you're fit all around.
Most of the time our involvement with the adoption consists of filling out forms and obtaining documents, neither of which necessarily touch the heart. Doing the Home Study and getting to know our social worker went a long way in bringing everything home and making the adoption seem more real and tangible. We got more and more excited as we discussed the details of being matched with our daughter and bringing her home.
I also had a moment where the reality of having two children hit me a little harder. I feel like I finally got to a good place with Malia, of feeling like I have somewhat of a handle on things and life. Not having a growing belly to remind me everyday of what's to come made it harder for me to mentally prepare myself. I'm glad we're approaching the end of the paperwork phase and having more personal interaction with Holt where everything feels more, well, personal.

The App Is In!

Whew! As we previously mentioned, China won't accept my US passport as proof of citizenship, so I've had to assemble a laundry list of documents to the US Center for Immigration Services to try to get my Certificate of Citizenship. Why don't I have one? I have this vague recollection of missing my appointment back in, like, 1984 because of a soccer tournament. I can't even remember if I scored a goal that day to at least make up for some of the pain in the fanny this has caused us.

Well, the documents are in (along with a hefty $460 check). The funniest piece of it was submitting my Family Census Register from Korea. For those of you who've never experienced life in a developing country (at least Korea was in 1972), let's just say that the documentation for stuff is... well, different. My Family Census Register is literally on this thin, see-through paper. It might even be made of rice. It's all in Chinese characters and it traces my lineage for multiple generations. Like hundreds of years, I think. That stuff is important in patriarchal societies like Korea. I'd love to see the look on the immigration officer's face when they try to figure out what to do with it.

We're just hoping it won't take the full 6 months to review and get my certificate. In the meantime, we're going to keep moving on other stuff (e.g., home study, compiling dossier) that is not predicated on the proof of citizenship being in place.

Thanks, all, for caring enough about us to read this blog and ask us how we're doing. The support and encouragement has meant a lot.

US vs. Korea vs. China

OK, so why China? As my sister-in-law (pediatrician extraordinaire) likes to say, "It's multi-factorial." For those of us who speak common English, that means there were lots of reasons.

Both because of my Korean heritage as well as my job in an international foundation, I have come to learn quite a bit about and develop a heart for the plight of orphans in other countries. Whenever I'd tell Eliza about some wonderful organization working with orphans in a faraway land, we'd both imagine bringing one of those children home one day.

But then we found out how much international adoptions cost. Typically, the expenses total in the five digits -- up to $30,000 - $40,000 or more. At first, we thought this was going to be prohibitively expensive.

Meanwhile, we started getting involved in a faith-based council that works with and supports the Department of Family & Children's Services (the government agency that administers the child welfare program) here in the Long Beach area. Our focus shifted to doing a foster-adoption here in Long Beach, a city and community we've come to care deeply about, despite all of its problems. [By the way, we also considered a private domestic adoption, but that too was quite expensive.]

Our first step was to get advice from people who had experience with foster-adoptions. Some of the stories were heartbreaking. We were told of one family who fostered a young boy shortly after he was born, cared for him for his first 10 months of life, and learned to love him as part of the family. Then a relative of the biological family came back into the picture out of the blue and was able to legally take custody of the child. Those are some of the risks of foster-adoption in the US.

But there are unknowns with any situation, so that wasn't enough to dissuade us. Much more significant was a piece of advice to us from an experienced adoptive mother of three. She told us not to alter the birth order. In other words, don't bring home a sibling that's older than Malia. For some reason, that made sense immediately to both of us.

And because you're much more likely to be able to get a child as young as a baby through certain other countries, we decided to revisit the international route. How did we overcome the cost issue? We basically decided to take a step of faith. We also learned of a few grant programs and nonprofits that assist families who are trying to adopt. There's also an adoption tax credit, which helps. So for the time being, we are putting some of our other projects on hold like our house remodel, and tucking the savings back under our mattress in preparation for this adoption.

The choice then was to find out which countries allowed for adoption of a child at a fairly young age. After considering a few other factors, we identified two possibilities -- China and Korea. Now as Korean-Americans, we'd seem like logical candidates to adopt from Korea, and we were quite open to it. Ultimately, however, we chose to go with China, even though we were going to face an extra hurdle -- the potential of a longer wait.

2008 was a year where lots of the Chinese bureaucracy put its focus on preparing for the world to see it host the Beijing Olympics well (which it did), but the consequence was felt by potential adoptive parents. The timeline for adoption went from approx. 2 years to 3+ years. The only way we could expedite this was to be willing to adopt a child with a health problem (in some cases correctible).

After some discussion and prayer, we both still felt drawn strongly to China. In her mind's eye, Eliza pictured a little Chinese baby girl and began to have her heart set on it. For me, a few trips to China for work solidified it for me. I've come to love China -- its people and culture. I was ready to become, in some ways, part-Chinese by virtue of bringing a child from that heritage.

So there you have it. It probably sounds like a convoluted story, but we're really excited about it. Now the trick is figuring out how to ease our little toddler, Malia, into the idea that Mommy and Daddy are going to be disappearing for 2 weeks, and then suddenly reappearing with a baby sister. I hope it doesn't traumatize her! But we think she's ready to be a big sis, and this little video clip is a good sign (you'll need to be friends with me on Facebook to see it).

Why Adopt?

Since Eliza has really been the one shepherding the process with our adoption agency, Holt International, she'll have much more to share on the milestones and pitfalls along those lines. I thought I'd share a bit about how we even got here in the first place.

Many people have asked us why we are adopting. We're still relatively young, and we seem to be able to still have biological children. What leads us down this path at this juncture in our lives? It's a good question, and the answer goes to the core of who we both are.

Quite honestly, it begins with something quite intangible... we just both knew, even before meeting each other and getting married, that we wanted to adopt. I remember a time visiting an orphanage in Korea in 1990, during my gap year between high school and college. All the kids at this particular place had special needs, most with very visible disabilities. I spent an afternoon holding one young boy, probably about 3 years old, and just feeding him in my arms. I cried the whole time. It wasn't just pity, although in the raw emotion of the moment, I did feel great compassion for him. I looked into his face, and I hardly paid attention to the cerebral palsy. I just wanted to connect with him, to give him some palpable sense that I loved him.

I wish I could say that I went back to that orphanage again and again. I didn't. The day wiped me out emotionally. What it did do, though, was put an indelible mark on me that has stayed with me to this day. I wanted to be an adoptive parent. I just knew that was my destiny.

Of course, as a Christian, I don't really believe in destiny. I believe in a God who is in control of all things, and I see now how He has orchestrated a lot of things to reinforce that heartfelt conviction.

One of those things was meeting Eliza. I remembering during our courtship, having the first conversation about my desire to be an adoptive parent. I was head-over-heels in love with her, but I was worried she didn't share my vision for how to grow a family. As the words came out of my mouth, I wondered to myself if this could become a deal-breaker. Thankfully, my fears were immediately put to rest, because Eliza nearly jumped through the telephone line in excitement. She had always wanted to be an adoptive parent, too! Suffice to say, it was a good thing we weren't physically together, or the shared passion of that moment could have been scintillating (ok, I'm grossing everyone out).

I can't ignore the role of theology, i.e., how I understand God. The Bible talks about "learning to do right, seeking justice, encouraging the oppressed, defending the cause of the fatherless, pleading the case of the widow." [Isaiah 1:17] What a wonderful thing to know that the God I worship also cares deeply about orphans! The Christian life is so rich when the head and the heart work in concert.

When we have more time, we'll write about one of our next most commonly-asked questions - why China?

I want to laugh at my last post now. The relief of completing the paperwork for Holt was short-lived. After getting through all the holiday festivities and meeting out-of-town friends, I finally decided to tackle the China Guidebook that Holt sent us. I went to the section titled "Dossier" so I could get a handle on the next wave of documents.

Oh my gosh.

There are 21 documents, forms, and letters, 18 of which need to be notarized, certified, and authenticated. One big piece of advice if intercountry adoption is anywhere in your mind: make sure you have all your citizenship and other vital records in order and in your possession. Paul became a naturalized citizen through his parents before he was 18, but never got a Certificate of Citizenship. He now has to apply to get one for our dossier, even though he has a passport to prove his citizenship. The application itself to get the certificate is 5 pages long and takes about 6 months to process.

It's hard at times like this not to get really discouraged. It gets hard to see past all the logistics of adoption and see our child. Please pray that we remain hopeful and steadfast.