Paperwork complete- let’s go home!

Our CCAI representative took our paperwork to the US Consulate here in Guangzhou this morning, and we have officially met the requirements for bringing Sydney home ... we do a small "giving of oaths" ceremony tomorrow, and then we're on the plane! Rollin continues to feel low, Sydney coughed LITERALLY for 20 minutes solid this afternoon and tossed her cookies (all over me - but hey, I don't really mind when it's my daughter :)), and I have developed pink eye. But, WE'RE COMING HOME!

I was talking with my mom this afternoon about this adoption as we spent most of the day shopping and carrying little Sydney around in the Snugli. I really would do this again in a heartbeat - not because it was "fun" or "vacation" or "thrilling" or "rewarding," but because the Gotcha Day experience is so fantastic that it makes the whole thing irresistable. To have prayed for this child even before she was conceived half way around the world; to have asked the Lord to protect and nuture her in her birth mother's womb; to have thought of her daily as she was born and very quickly abandoned; to ponder her adjustments with dozens of other infants in a room seeking attention and touch; to have conquered paperwork mountains and hurdled government obstacles; to have received her 6 months picture when she was already 9 months and put a name and face to a dream; to have prepared suitcases full of baby things and medicines and stuff for a 2 week vacation in what could seem to some like TimBuckToo; to have met 9 other families on the SAME road with the same burning desire; and THEN, to have this child, on a Tuesday afternoon at dinner time, put in your arms for EVER, never to be taken away, and never to be abandoned again, and to find that she is SO FULL OF LIFE already.... yes, I'll do this again and again because the Lord compels me to do this for His little children who will be my children, too. This little girl is just so fixed in my heart after all this time, and there are times these last few days when I think she knows it.

So, we will bring her home to you, her family and friends, as well. I have been buoyed up during these last few days by the vision of you all typing such great encouragement to us in the comments, knowing you are reading our adventure and praying for the Lord to guide and direct us. We can get caught up in the minute to minute bustle of life in a hotel in China with an 11 month old and meetings to go to and forms to sign and bags to pack and loved ones to nurse back to health ... this week I have really paused to think of you all and smile with a new spring to my step. I am so thankful that Sydney and this whole adoption process have meant so much to you all - I love knowing that the Lord is working out His purposes for all of us through her adoption.