One Year Ago...

I saw my daughter's face for the first time.

This is the call that forever changed our family.

I was more than happy to give up my #1 spot on the Holt web forum. :)

So excited to be a big brother.

Here's the blog post I wrote on my old site:

September 8, 2009
After nearly a year absence from Xanga, I am back and for good reason.
At 10:40am I got a call from what my caller id said "Private Caller". It turned out to be our social worker telling us the wonderful news that we had received a referral for a baby girl.

I had planned out our last day before school with a lot of errands. I expected us to be out most of the day and was upstairs on the computer printing out some coupons for a store we were going to (Michael's). Austin and I were dressed and ready to leave and I was printing out my last coupon when the phone rang. The caller id read "PRIVATE CALLER" and I hesitated before I picked up. Thank goodness I answered because it was our social worker calling to tell us that we received a referral for a baby girl! One can only imagine my utter shock and disbelief. I had fully expected to wait quite a bit longer for a referral. She gave me some initial information about her including her name and birth date and told me to check my email for pictures and more information. She also said the agency would be sending me paperwork to complete through email so I was to check for it within the next few minutes. As soon as we hung up I asked Austin to come upstairs and called Sam. My heart was literally pounding with excitement and nervousness as I told both Sam and Austin at the same time. I quickly checked my email but didn't open it. I first forwarded it to Sam because I wanted all three of us to see her for the first time together and for us to read about her together. Sam was on the speaker phone and together we read about our little girl and saw her face for the first time. I could barely contain myself - I was laughing, giggling, repeating every other minute, "Isn't she so cute. I think she's so cute!"  Austin kept repeating "Oh my... oh my... she's so cute." and Sam was mostly silent, quietly processing the entire situation, still in disbelief.

After finally getting off of the phone with Sam, my head was spinning. I quickly determined that my errands could be done some other day and basically spent the better part of the day staring at her picture, reading about her over and over again, and looking over all the paperwork that now needed to be done.

We have waited so long for this day to come (4 years, 5 months, 1 week and 2 days to be exact) and so many times I wondered if it would ever come. Through the ups and downs of our entire adoption process, God has been good and faithful. 

God was good and faithful

• when we made the decision to adopt back in 2004.
• when Korea denied our application due to my health condition.
• when He opened the doors for us to adopt through China.
• when I developed kidney disease and we decided to put our adoption on hold.
• when my kidneys improved over a year later and we were able to return to the China program.
• when we completed all our paperwork and were officially on the China wait list.
• when the wait times for China were doubling and tripling in length and it felt like my heart could take it no longer.
• when we made the difficult decision to exit the China program and reapply to Korea.
• when Korea accepted our application the second time around. 

And now one year later, God continues to show us that He is and always will be a good and faithful God.