Visitors to Shihezi!!!

There is a mission team leaving for China tomorrow through Orphan Outreach missions. The team is from a church in Texas. Their visit includes a day with the children in Shihezi next week! They are taking pictures of Anna and our family to Director Guo. We have sent her pictures several times before over the past two years. They are also taking a letter to her. The team hopes to have an opportunity to interact with Li Meng and to take some pictures of the children that include him. We are very excited and thankful that I "stumbled" upon the information about this group a month or so ago. We are praying for this team. There will be a blog for this trip on the orphan outreach website. Here is a link if you want to try to find it. I couldn't find it yet, but they don't leave until tomorrow so it should be up soon. http://missions.orphanoutreachblog.org/

We have a name!

After much prayer and lively discussion, we have finally agreed on the name Joshua! We deliberated for a very long time about the name. Since he is old enough to understand the importance and significance of his name, it seemed even more important that we choose a name that would have significance and meaning. There were several other names that had serious consideration and in the end I asked my husband to make a decision. He took a quick poll on this name while we on vacation and announced this was the name. The next morning I decided it would be nice to read through the Old Testament book of Joshua. I didn't get very far before I realized that our family had worn this name around our necks. A few years ago my husband started wearing a shield/cross pendant that had the verse Joshua 1:9 on the back. James had wanted one too and Pete bought one for him. The next Christmas, James wanted to buy one for everyone else in the family. I wore mine all of the time until I got my necklace in China with the Love symbol. I think we should all start wearing them again until we bring Joshua home. Joshua 1:9 - "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go."

Be Still

Naturally, the question everyone asks is "how is the adoption coming along?" The short answer is - slowly. When we found Li Meng's referral in April and made the decision to pursue his adoption, we had thought perhaps things would move more quickly the second time around. This is not the case. A number of things have changed. We are with a different and much larger agency. China has changed some of their rules and processes. The U.S. State Department has implemented new regulations for approving adoption immigration from certain countries - including China. This is the biggest obstacle at the moment. If you want details, you can do a search on Hague Convention and Adoption. You will see that the intention was to protect children from illegitimate adoptions and child trafficking. The effect, however, has been to bring the adoption immigration process from Hague Convention countries to a halt since April 1. We are actually among the blessed to be with an agency that is even able to accept applications for these countries. Several agencies are in the "pending certification" stage or have been denied certification under the new regulations. Our former adoption agency is in the "pending" category and has not been able to accept applications since April 1. However, even the approved and certified agencies have been having tremendous struggles. Our agency has yet to have a adoption immigration approved since the implementation of the regulations. I have read blogs from other agencies that are also reporting that every single home study they have submitted has been rejected since April 1. I've been told the rejections have all had to do with technical points and wording rather than the content of the home study. Obviously, this does NOTHING to help orphaned children. The ultimate effect is to slow down the process, increase the agency costs, reduce the number of agencies that can place children which will result in less children having a family. At this point, our home study cannot be completed because our social worker is waiting to find out what wording will be accepted. We actually sent an email note to our U.S. Senator, Gordon Smith. I know many people have been contacting congress. I hope and pray they will realize these regulations have not been well implemented and take action to remedy the situation. In the meantime, it is personally very frustrating. We do not know when we can anticipate having our immigration approval which is needed before we can send our dossier to China. At this point, we have done everything we can do to expedite the process. We are left to Be Still and know that our little boy is in God's hands. He will watch over him and bringing us together at the right time. Thank you to all of you that have been praying. Hebrews 10:23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.

Home Study

We had our first home study meeting on Monday. Our social worker is a sweet mother of two with a Texas accent. She has one home study ahead of ours to complete. It is actually for another family we know that is adopting from China also. The home study process is complicated a bit by the new immigration rules that went into place on April 1 when the U.S. began implementing changes to comply with the Hague Convention on international adoption. Apparently the new centralized government agency now reviewing requests for adoption immigration is much more strict about the information and wording in the home study. No one seems to know just how long it will take to get our immigration approval, something that is needed to send our dossier to China. Once our home study is complete, we will send it in for review for U.S. immigration. Around the same time, we will be able to do our official request to China for preliminary approval to adopt Li Meng. Once China grants preliminary approval, they require the dossier be submitted within 3 months. Since there are unknowns about the timing for U.S. immigration approval, our agency has delayed making the request until they think we are within that 3 month window. We are very anxious to have that preliminary approval! Once that is received, we plan to send a photo album and gift package to Li Meng to begin to introduce ourselves. Prayers for this part of the process to be completed quickly are greatly appreciated! p.s. After about 70 attempts, we finally found a couple pictures we thought we could use in our dossier!

Praying for China Victims

Our prayers are also with the many victims of the earthquake in China. I heard this morning that there are more than 80,000 people dead or missing. We have heard from some of our former students in the neighboring province of Chongqing. There is such grieving in that country. There are said to be 5 million people without homes and there are many millions more in the surrounding areas that experienced the quake and are observing the suffering (Chongqing itself has 30 million people). We have heard of many ministries directing help to the victims. Here are a couple of links.http://adoptedbydesign.typepad.com/orphanstickethome/
http://www.childrenshopeint.org/earthquake.htm

One encouraging piece of news we have heard is that despite several orphanages being destroyed, no children in the orphanages were killed in this event. The first link above is specifically directed to helping provide new housing for the children from the orphanages that were destroyed. The second is for Children's Hope International. A friend in China has recommended them. They have workers in the earthquake zone. The link above is their daily posting of aid being given in the quake zone.

Praying that the light of God's love and mercy is shining brightly in the darkness left by the earthquake, the Aldrich Family

Praying for the Chapman Family

Our hearts are broken for the Chapman family this morning as they have lost their beautiful daughter Maria. She is the youngest of their three daughters adopted from China. As you can see from our blog, Steven Curtis Chapman's music has touched our hearts in many ways. Aside from his adoption related songs, he has written many other songs that God has used to touch my own heart over the years. I could make a list of different songs and how they have impacted me. I have sometimes referred to him as "Pastor Steven Curtis Chapman." I do believe God has truly inspired many of the songs he has written. He has written songs of comfort for many others, including parents that have lost children. We are praying that God brings comfort and peace to them in this tragedy. I saw this link today. http://chapmanchannel.typepad.com/inmemoryofmaria/

China Blessings - The Sequel

Li Meng

This sweet little boy is from the same corner of the world as our Anna. He lives in the orphanage in ShiHeZi that was responsible for Anna. He is in some of the pictures that we received of Anna. We made inquiries about him over a year ago when we noticed his arms appeared to have the same condition as Anna's. The orphanage director was kind enough to give us information about him and confirmed his condition is the same. This is a rare condition and a geneticist told us this version of it occurs in only about 1 in 200,000 births. His official birth date is October 18, 2002. This makes him 5 1/2 years old, one year younger than Mark and about 20 months older than Anna. About a month ago, I stumbled upon his listing with an adoption agency that friends are using to adopt children from Ethiopia. The circumstances were really quite miraculous. We began praying about what God would have us do now that we found this little guy available for adoption. This was not something we took lightly. After much prayer and consideration, we decided to make every effort to bring him into our family. The agency has approved our application and officially "matched" us with him. We are now beginning the "paperchase" that took about nine months to bring Anna to our home. Below are some of the pictures we originally saw that showed Anna and Li Meng together. For those of you that want to read the longer version of how Li Meng came into our lives, it is included in the Help Bring Him Home blog - see link. More updates on Li Meng and other updates from our family will be posted here in the future!