Ok, we officially received our Pre approval today from the Chinese government for our adoption of Guang Ming! This means they have accepted our request to process our adoption for him. At the end of it all, they will give us a second final approval, but Guang Ming is officially going to be our son and we can let the world know!
A couple of weeks ago, we discovered that David's foster home was being sponsored by Bethany Christian Services. We were invited by them to begin to sponsor his foster home ourselves through their program. We of course said yes! As we began our sponsorship, we were able to view all of the bi-annual reports that the foster family wrote since they began their work as foster parents in 2009. Through those reports, we learned that David had been living with this same family since he was 7 months old! And in addition to that, he had been living there nearly all of that time with Guang Ming as his foster brother. We knew Guang Ming had been a foster brother to him when he was younger from our early orphanage report, but we assumed they had been split up over a year ago. When we learned that they had remained together and that Guang Ming was a loving and caring big brother to David, it created in our hearts a desire to see Guang Ming find a loving home of his own.
At first we thought our role could be as an advocate for him to help him find a family. We sent out emails and contacted some friends who we thought might be interested in adopting him. What I was NOT expecting was for Jeff to come home last Thursday night and talk about how God had been working in his heart to change his understanding of what it means to adopt and in that process cause him to seriously consider adopting Guang Ming ourselves! At the end of the evening, Jeff said, "I think God is offering us an invitation to make Guang Ming our son. It's not a command, but it's an invitation to step into the adventure of redeeming this little boy's life". Well, I for one have learned that when God is the one doing the inviting, the only sane answer to give is yes. :) So that's what we did, and as of today we are officially starting our journey to bring Guang Ming home.
We are fortunately able to re-use most of the paperwork that we had to gather for David's adoption. We are hoping that in a couple of months all of the updates we need will be complete and everything will be submitted to China. From that point, it is about a 4-5 month wait for China to go through their process. In other words, we are likely going to be able to bring Guang Ming home sometime this summer! We don't know yet if we will be able to meet him while we are on our trip to adopt David, but we sure hope so!
Here are some more pictures of our handsome little man! He is 3 years old (born August of 2008), and he was born with his left eye shut. Don't really know much more than that about his medical background, but he is a smart and loving little man who is really curious about the world around him and loves playing with other children. His foster family says he asks "what is that?" about nearly everything. :)
I'll leave you with the conversation I had with Miriam when we asked her about adopting Guang Ming.
Me: Miriam, how would you feel if we brought David's foster brother Guang Ming home and made him a new brother as well? How would you feel about having two new brothers?
Miriam: Good! I like that! (then a considerable pause) It also makes me feel a little confused.
Me: I can understand that! What makes you feel confused?
Miriam: Well, I just don't think most people do things like this!
Me: (with a great deal of laughter) You are absolutely right baby girl! Most people do not do things like this. Aren't we SO BLESSED that we get to love TWO brothers when most families don't even get to love one??
Miriam: Yes! (I can't even tell you how much I love that kid!)
More pictures of our boys together! These pictures are from this past spring
This is Elijah's favorite picture. He is always asking to see "chick gege (big brother)"
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