Getting Ready To Go Get Hallie

We got Travel Approval two weeks too late to be able to go get Hallie and be back before school starts, which was a bit of a bummer.  Ryan can't miss the first two weeks of school without paying for it majorly, so that means we are waiting until August 27th to leave to China.  Although I'd love to be there right now, meeting Hallie, it's actually been a good thing that we are waiting.  First of all, I'm sick.  Nothing too bad, but a sore throat and an overall tired, yucky feeling... definitely not how I want to feel on an adoption trip.  Also, Typhoon Soudelor, the strongest storm of 2015, is making its way to China and though Shanghai doesn't fall directly in it's path, accuweather.com says (read this in your best announcer voice) "The outermost rain bands of Soudelor will also graze Shanghai during the second half of this weekend. While widespread issues are not expected, localized flash flooding cannot be ruled out."  We could do without a typhoon, and are glad to not be worrying about it.  There's also the fact that it turns out our airfare is looking to be much more reasonable than it was for Jordan's adoption.  Part of that is because we're not purchasing tickets so last minute, but also, we're just missing peak travel season, which really helps.  After receiving more grant rejection letters from some of the organizations that had helped out with Jordan's adoption, we are glad to cut costs any way we can.

Once again, we've found ourselves in the situation of knowing that we have a child on the other side of the planet, who we need to bring home quickly, with the realization that, even after using every penny of our savings, we will still come short.  The only way we could be okay with that is because of God's reassurance that it will all work out in the end.  So for months we've been looking for ways to come up with the money and praying... lots of praying, together as a family, that we could bring together the money when we needed it.  As we've come closer to travel, several people have made contributions to help get Hallie home.  It's hard to express our immense appreciation for the generosity of friends, family, and even a few strangers that have been trying to help us make up the last of the funds we need.  The ironic thing is, every single time someone donates, our first reaction is, "Ack, we can't take that!"  But I finally had an "ah-ha" moment where I realized that every bit, no matter how big or small, is an answer to our prayers and how ridiculous it would be to pray for something and then reject it, so we are just trying to work on graciously accepting help.

Speaking of help, after taking Maddie and Kaitlyn to China with us to adopt Jordan, it was clear that having them there was a huge asset and there was no doubt that they eased Jordan's transition.  So we knew that when we went to meet Hallie, we would definitely take a child with us again.  The obvious choice was to take Enoch, since he was next in line, and we've been planning on that all along.  But a few months ago, I started feeling like we should take one of our girls too, that Hallie would really benefit from having a sister there as well.  I kept hoping some grant money could make it possible, but when it came time to get our visas, we knew we weren't going to be able to afford taking an extra girl.  Yet, after talking it over, Ryan and I felt like we should go ahead and get Kaitlyn a visa too, just in case.  (We had just taken Maddie with us to Chicago, so we thought that if we could somehow pull it off, it would be most fair to take Kate)  By the time we got our visas back, I was pretty sure we had just wasted our money on getting Kaitlyn's visa and was a little sick about the waste.  Our Travel Approval came and we started working on booking airfare.  We asked our agent to price tickets for Kaitlyn too, though we doubted we'd take her.  We finally had our flights on hold, and just had to wait until the next morning to get our agency's approval before making our final decision about taking Kate and purchasing our tickets.  That evening our neighbors, the Gibbons, showed up with a check for the amount we needed to take Kaitlyn too, saying they really wanted her to be able to go with us.  We were blown away by their generosity and their amazing timing, literally hours before we had to make our final decision.  I still tear up when I think about it.  As hard and stressful as this whole adoption business can be, it gives a chance to see the goodness of so many people.  We're excited and nervous and ready to go get Hallie... when we finish the million and one things we need to do before we leave!