Journey to Joshua

Many people ask or wonder why we are adopting a six year old boy from China. There are those that wonder why we would travel around the world to add a child to our family when there are children in need here in America. We also have wondered why God has led us around the world to add two precious children to our family when it would seem to make much more sense to adopt some of the many precious children nearby that are in need of families. We can only share our story of how we were led on these journeys. We never considered where to adopt from or what agency to use, we only decided whether or not to say "yes" to these children. Here are the stories of Anna and Joshua.

The most logical place to begin this story is with our 16th Wedding anniversary when we found a piece of property and home in the country. My husband and oldest daughter had long dreamed of living in the country. God had led us through so many changes, but always proved faithful, so we decided to take a leap of faith and buy a new home. My daughter had previous sketched her dream property and had named it J bar J Ranch to stand for Jehovah Jirah - God Provides. We moved in June of 2005 and spent the summer working on the house and property. By fall of 2005, a pay cut Pete had taken to change to a job with less travel and the move were feeling like they were catching up with us. We decided to cut back on some activities to save time and money when we started back to school in the fall. This was a great blessing. Life was good and comfortable again when we started up our school year.

In October, we decided to start preparing to build a pole barn. One issue with where we had moved is that it had no garage and little storage. We had rented a portable storage pod, but started moving things from the pod to a three-sided shed so that we could begin excavation for a pole barn. On the week the pod was scheduled to be picked up, my husband asked if I could take my oldest daughter to her Wednesday night youth meeting so he could empty the storage unit. I had never attended before because he would take her while I stayed with the younger ones.

As we pulled into the parking lot, I had a strong feeling that there was a reason I was supposed to be there that evening. I very much enjoyed their worship time. I listened very intently to the message, thinking perhaps there would be something in the message that was particularly important for me to hear that night. It was a very good message, but when it concluded, I didn’t feel like it had been of any special significance for me to be there for it. I found myself wondering why I was supposed to be there. After the message, they separated the boys from the girls for a short talk about preparing for the Winter Formal Dinner. After listening to them advise the girls about appropriate dress, I thought to myself, “this must be the reason I was supposed to be here for Rachel this evening.” After the discussion, there was some discussion about whether to rejoin the boys and men for prayer time. However, it appeared the boys and men were already praying, so the girls began sharing prayer requests. A high school aged girl raised her hand and shared with us that her family was praying for an adoptive family for a little girl from China. Her mother added on to her request and explained that they were aware of a little “special needs” orphan who was supposed to be placed with another family, it hadn’t worked out and now the adoption agency had a very short time to try to place this child with another family before her file would “go back to China.”

As we prayed for all of the requests and this little girl, I had an overwhelming conviction that I needed to ask about her. I knew that if I left without at least asking about her, I would feel great conviction all they way home. As we finished praying, I made my way to where this mother had gone. Honestly, I expected there would be many women who would be asking about her as I didn’t feel this conviction was unique to me. I told her I felt like I needed to ask about this little girl. It seemed a little crazy to even be asking about her and my head was spinning a bit. I told her that I really had a heart for China and had for a while. And told her some things God had done to draw my heart to China over the past couple of years, a missionary that had spoken about Chinese orphans and a Chinese student we had hosted that summer. She told me about her family, five biological children, a daughter from China and a son from Russia. She also told me a bit about the family that wasn’t able to adopt the little girl. The conviction in my heart, the conversation, my emotions, reality and the background noise of 50 kids and their parents having snacks were all beginning to overwhelm me to the point I wasn’t able to absorb much of what she was saying. I did absorb the $14,000 to $20,000 answer to my question about the cost of an international adoption. My first reaction was that, of course, we do not have that money. Which was followed closely by a little voice reminding me that we were about to begin using our Equity Credit Line to build our greatly anticipated and “much needed” Pole Barn. Theresa told me of her heart for adoption and that her inclination was to take my email address and send me pictures the next day. However, she said she would not do that and instead gave me her phone number, asked me to pray and talk with my husband and call her if I wanted more information. On the drive home, I prayed to myself and tried to figure out how a Pole Barn could be more important than changing a child’s life.

That night, I told Pete the story. He said what I expected him to say, “well, we had better at least ask about her.” I called Theresa the next morning who gave me the adoption agency information. At that point, everything in me was thinking it was completely crazy to be thinking about adopting right now, especially a child with special needs on the other side of the planet when we had so many projects and expenses underway at our new home and on the heels of what have been a couple of crazy, change-filled and challenging years for us. I had just the week before been observing how Mark had finally gotten to a point where he was far more a joy than a challenge, he was making his bed, being obedient, saying sweet things (like “I love you all the way up past heaven”)and letting us do school! We had just that summer seen huge improvements in his behavior and health after learning he had multiple food allergies as well as allergies to some animals and pretty much every tree and growing thing! It looked like life might be heading into an easier time for us for a while.

However, I couldn’t let this little girl go. I really felt the Lord had put a conviction in my heart to ask about her and make sure she had a family. I really expected that our call to obedience might end with a phone call finding out that another family was going to adopt her. I spoke to the China coordinator at the adoption agency. She was very sweet, told me the China adoption requirements and what they knew of RuYi’s medical condition which was problems with her arms and hands, but otherwise healthy, and her living situation which was in foster care. I asked if any other families were looking at her. She said some had inquired, but none had applied. She told me she would email her pictures as well as those of another boy in the same “special needs” group who had not been placed. She explained the process for placing special needs children and that they were at the end of their time for this group and were supposed to have returned the files the week before, but were still hoping to place these last two children. She also said she would mail an application and information packet to us.

I got the email shortly after we got off of the phone. I spent that morning looking at her pictures and at the agency website. I was still thinking it was crazy, but I couldn’t imagine letting her just go back to the China filing system. Despite my disrupted morning and need to do school with the kids, I suddenly got it into my head that I HAD to get the inserts for my running shoes that day. I put the kids in the car and headed to Portland Running Company in Tualatin. The woman that helped me was very friendly and knowledgeable. I’m not sure what I had said, but she asked me what church I attended and told me she was a Christian. She asked me what event I was training to run. When I told her, she told me she had considered that event herself, but couldn’t do it this year “because we are going to China to get our daughter.” I sat there stunned for a moment and said, “you won’t believe what I spent the morning doing today!” She went on to tell me all of the details, documents, travel and timing involved in a Chinese adoption. I told her our story. She said to me, “I just have this feeling you are supposed to pursue this.” That was a bit stunning being spoken so bluntly from a Shoe salesperson! As I was leaving the store, she explained to me that she only worked a day a week so that she could save money for the adoption and said, “you know, it wasn’t a coincidence you came in today, don’t you?” Well, my head was really swimming as I drove home. I was beginning to have that same queasy, slightly delirious feeling I had always had when I had discovered I was pregnant. I discovered that my daughter who had brought a drawing pad along for the ride was busy drawing pictures of the little girl she had seen on my computer that morning. That night, we had a family meeting. I shared about the shoe store experience. We all shared our concerns, fears and convictions about this little girl and decided that we would ask more information, just keep going, pray for her and see what happened.

Later that evening, I was cleaning the kitchen and praying about RuYi. My practical brain was taking over. I kept thinking about all of the challenges of adopting, the expense, the travel, the time, therapy and care for a special needs child. I thought of all of the people that were more qualified and all the reasons I wasn’t. Even as I listed all of these arguments in my head, I thought of all of the arguments I’ve had come up with against other things I felt God had called us to do and how they had been overcome. I was truly agonizing in prayer when I came across something that needed to be filed in the office. As I walked into the dark office, I remembered I had left my email logged on. I sat at the desk and hit a key to warm up the screen. As I sat there in the dark, my screen warmed up to a full screen picture of RuYi because my daughter had figured out how to blow it up on my screen. I put my head in my hands, was riveted on her picture and prayed that God would give us wisdom and clear direction. As I was staring at her picture and praying, a song was starting on a somewhat unfamiliar CD I had popped in a little while earlier. I didn’t recognize the instrumental beginning or remember the words to the song, but this is what I heard sung as I stared at her picture, “I saw the face of Jesus in a little orphan girl; she was standing in a corner on the other side of the world. I heard the voice of Jesus whisper to my heart, you said you wanted to find me, well here I am and there you are. What now? What will you do now that you found me? What now? What will you do with this treasure you found? I know I may not look like what you expected, but if you remember, this is right where I said I would be. What now?” I sat staring at her picture and crying. When Peter walked in from outside a little later, I sat him down at the computer, told him what happened and played the song for him. He said something simple like, “well, I guess we’re going to get a little girl from China.” Leave it to my husband to be calm, cool and collected when I am in an emotional storm! (At the bottom of this page is a link with this song.)

The next couple of days we waited for her file so we could take it to our pediatrician for the required review.
On Tuesday evening, we had dinner at the home of the Van Wetten family. Their daughter had shared the original prayer request and Theresa and I had spoken a few times by this point. They are a wonderful family. They told us their story of adopting from China (while also learning they were expecting a baby) and then from Russia. They encouraged us in many ways and prayed with us for orphaned children and for where God was leading us.

Wednesday afternoon, we all went to the pediatrician’s office. Our doctor looked at the information, pictures and x-rays that we had. She finished looking and said she knew what was wrong with RuYi’s arms and that it is something that could happen to arms and feet when they are constricted in the womb. She said to us, “we can take care of this.” She told us she looked very healthy and that she appeared to be developing normally. She told us there was no question her life would be better here than in China. We were surprised and excited by her optimism and encouraging words. We left knowing that our doctor could be wrong in her assessment, but feeling it was one more confirmation that we should proceed.

Thursday morning, I called the agency and told them we were going to pursue the adoption of Ru Yi, who is now our sweet precious Anna. We brought her home August 1, 2006. It took 9 months from when we heard about her until we brought her home. It was difficult to know our baby girl was on the other side of the planet. God did many amazing and miraculous things while we waited for her. One of those was getting us connected with a family that had adopted her foster brother and the woman who ran the charity the provided her foster care. Through them, we were able to get some updates on her and pictures. We traveled to China for two weeks. Our two oldest daughters came with us.

Anna had just turned two years old. When she was brought to us, we weren’t sure what to expect from her. When she first came into the room, we were all stunned by this beautiful little girl and let out a collective “oh!!” This terrified her and sent her into tears. The orphanage doctor who had brought her to us took her to the rest room and we collected ourselves and got out toys and cookies. When she returned, she quickly warmed up and engaged with us. Within about ten minutes, they told us we needed to go to the passport office and we started down the hallway to the elevator. Something told me I should pick her up as we got in the elevator, but I was nervous about how she would react. I decided to just pick her up and hope for the best. As I scooped her in my arms, I was again overwhelmed by that mother love that I had felt at the birth of each of our children. She smiled and laughed. Later in the day, she got tired and cried for her foster mother, but let me hold her and fell asleep with her head on my shoulder.
Blog of Our Trip below:
http://www.thestoryofyou.net/AnnaMei.html

As with home schooling, leaving my job, having a fourth child and moving, it hasn’t always been easy. Anna is a strong little girl, with strong opinions. But, I have no doubt God has a purpose and plan for her just like he does for our other four children. She is a joy and a delight and I feel privileged and blessed to being living this adventure that God has made my life. Back in the days when I had an office and administrative assistant, I never could have imagined being a home school mother of five living in the country. Many days I feel unqualified. However, God has been gracious to give me glimpses of the fruit and to show me that it isn’t about what I am qualified to do. He has been able to do and accomplish things in and through my children that are far beyond my ability and vision. Following God’s calling is not easy, but it is a blessing and adventure that I would not want to miss and that I know promises fruit far beyond what I can see today.

Our adventure isn’t over yet. About five months after we came home, Pete and I took Anna to an adoption information seminar. While we were waiting for our turn to speak, we sat in the back of the room with Anna. We had brought a couple of our little photo albums with us and Anna was looking at pictures with Pete. While Anna was pointing at pictures of the children taken at the orphanage with her, Pete took particular notice of a little boy standing next to Anna in a couple of the pictures. We hadn’t noticed until that evening that the little boy appeared to have the same condition affecting his arms as Anna. When we got home, we took a closer look at the pictures. We really thought he looked a lot like Anna and were nearly positive he also had Arthrogryposis affecting his arms. I had trouble falling asleep that night. I remember feeling a bit stunned. “Why Lord, are you bringing this little boy to our attention?” We had only had Anna home for five months. Adopting a little boy wasn’t in my plans. The pictures weren’t very good or particularly flattering. Despite that, I couldn’t get this little guy out of my thoughts. I wondered if he had already been adopted and if we might be able to get in contact with his family to tell them about Anna and their similarities. I sent a note to my friend in China to find out if he was in the same foster care program Anna had been in. He was not.

The next week, I shared a little about this little boy at Ladies Bible Study and told them we would like try to find out more about him. Someone prayed about whether we might adopt him. That was a bit unsettling to me.

At the end of the month, Anna had a series of appointments with specialists at Seattle Children’s Hospital. One of them was a geneticist and pretty much the world’s expert on Arthrogryposis. She was very kind and generous with her time and spent quite a while visiting with us about Anna. We showed her the pictures of Anna with the little boy. She said she was sure that he had the same condition, Arthrogryposis Amyoplasia, affecting his arms. According to Dr. Hall, this condition is rare and in that particular presentation probably affects about 1 in 200,000 births. She also told us that it is not considered a hereditary condition. A genetic researcher from University of Washington came in and found us later. She told us they were studying whether there might be some genetic link to the condition and that if we ever located the family that had the little boy, they would be interested in doing genetic testing on our two children. On the drive home we talked about the little boy some more. We decided the only way to find out more about him would be to try to ask the orphanage director. We knew it was unlikely she would give us information about another child, however, we also thought it seemed by the pictures she had taken that she wanted us to notice him. We knew we would have to send the letter in Chinese and discussed whether we really wanted to spend the money for Chinese translation. We had done this with letters inquiring about Anna and it was quite expensive.

Later that week, the kids and I went to a writing seminar. At the seminar I saw a friend I hadn’t seen in a few months. She asked how Anna was adjusting. She told me about their exchange student from Japan. Then she shocked me when she said, “If you ever need anything translated into Chinese, let me know.” I was confused. She explained that it turned out her Japanese student had only lived in Japan a few years, but was originally from China and was fluent in Mandarin. I told her about the little boy and the letter we had been thinking of sending. She thought it would be a good community service project for her student. We began working on writing a letter for her to translate.

The following week, I sent an email note to the charity that had supported Anna’s foster care to find out if they had him in their program, they did not but said they would ask the orphanage about him. They were able to find out his name was Li Meng and his birthdate and that he had come into the orphanage at age three. They described his condition and stated it was the same as our daughter. They said they were planning to apply for his overseas adoption later that year. That was in February 2007. We followed up with the translated letters inquiring about him and other people that had been in pictures with our daughter.

I began looking at waiting child lists for various agencies. At that time, special needs cases were sent in small batches to individual adoption agencies. We had no way of knowing what agency would receive his file or when. We didn’t even know if it would come to a US agency.
In July, I began to wonder when his file would show up on a list. I asked the charity again and they found out from the orphanage that his paperwork had been sent to the Province officials, but not yet to Beijing. In October, we learned it was supposed to go to Beijing soon.
On Christmas eve 2007. I received an email note from the orphanage director. I had from time to time sent them updates and pictures of our daughter by email. This note from the orphanage said they had sent his information to “the center” which would be the China Center for Adoption Affairs, in October.
Over the next several months, I sent inquiries to adoption agencies and checked websites. By about March, I realized that trying to find this boy was like looking for a needle in a haystack. There were many, many agencies. I couldn’t even identify all of the agencies that received these lists. The lists changed frequently. Most agencies protected the identity of the children from the public. In addition to that, China was beginning to place children through a new program using a “shared list”. Access to this list was limited and agencies shared it only with their “paper ready” clients, meaning clients that had already paid them fees and completed the home study process. I knew it was completely in God’s hands and prayed I would at least find out what happened to this boy. Even if I did find him, I wasn’t sure what that would mean for our family and understood perhaps my role was simply to pray for this boy to have a family. I realized it would really take a miracle to find him and that I needed trust that if God wanted us to know what happened to him, it would happen.
On April 9, 2008 my husband was out of town. It was Wednesday and I took all of the children to the Fired Up Youth meeting. This was the same meeting where I heard the prayer request for our daughter. A friend who was waiting to adopt from Ethiopia shared that they had received preliminary referrals for two children. They didn’t have pictures yet, but one of the children was pictured in a blog for their adoption agency. She told a couple of us the website address for the agency.
When I got home that night, I was very tired and really just wanted to get the kids to bed and go to sleep myself. However, when I went to turn off my computer I thought about the picture of the girl that my friend had just received as an adoption referral. I realized that if I didn’t look at it that night, I would forget the website.
After finding the website and the picture of their little girl, I saw a tab for “China Waiting Children.” This was an agency I had not come across in my previous searches for Li Meng. They were a large agency and I wondered if they might post information about the shared list. I opened the China Waiting Children tab and I saw that there were no pictures and no real names. It was just a list with assigned “American” names, ages and a couple sentences about each child. Even though the information was very limited, I took a minute to scan down the list anyway. About 2/3 of the way down the list, I saw a 5 ½ year old boy named “Cole.” It said he had an arm deformity, but could feed himself, write and draw. I thought this description could fit Li Meng, but then realized the odds were against it. It especially seemed crazy since the friend who had given me this agency information was the mother of the young lady that had shared the prayer request for Anna three years ago!
I sent off a quick email note to the agency telling them I had been looking for a little boy and gave them his name, birthdate and orphanage information. I acknowledged I was looking for a needle in a haystack, but just had to ask if their “Cole” might be this boy. Before I went to bed, I sent an email note to a friend, another mother with children from China, who had known about Li Meng. She had been praying for him over the past year and I asked her to pray again. I went to sleep (eventually) praying for Li Meng and trying to convince myself that the next morning I would probably find out it wasn’t him.
The next morning, I tried to tell myself I would wait until later in the day to check my email so the agency would have time to see my email and I wouldn’t end up checking it all day, but I couldn’t stand it and checked it before starting school with the kids. There was a note from the agency telling me the boy listed as “Cole” was indeed Li Meng!

I called the friend who had given me the website address to share with her how her family was again connecting us with China and called my husband as he was about to get on an airplane to come home. I knew this would seem like bad timing to him. Work was extremely stressful and busy for him. We had just talked through a plan to try to finally pay off our creditline and were even talking about whether we could move to a lower cost home that might allow us to pay off our mortgage in a shorter amount of time. Another expensive international adoption would not appear to fit with that plan! As I prayed about it, I knew I needed to wait for God’s plan for this little boy to be revealed and not assume it was for him to be in our family. Pete came home late and exhausted after working on the plane all of the way home. We talked only briefly before going to sleep.

With Pete’s consent, the next day I told the agency that we would like to review the file. I was told we could officially review the file for 10 days and we would need to let her know what we were thinking by Monday, April 21 in the morning. I told her Pete was supposed to be on a business trip the following week and that I was going to be with kids at the Capitol for a class and that we wouldn’t be able to make a final decision or meet all of their review requirements by then. She asked me to check in and let her know where we we’re at, but that other families could review his file. Pete and I went to dinner that night. I waited for him to bring up the topic. We took a look at some information about Li Meng from the agency. He shared his concerns about adopting an older boy, how busy we were and our finances. He asked me what I’m thinking and I was able to share my heart for this boy. I told him was trying to hold the situation loosely and waiting to see what he felt led to do, praying and trusting that God will bring unity in our hearts one way or another.

A few days later, he asked me again what I was thinking. He told me that whatever happened, he wouldn’t let Li Meng’s file get returned to China. I knew we would be committed to helping him find a family even if it couldn’t be us. That night we told our two oldest daughters what had happened.

That Sunday, we asked the elders at church to pray for us as we considered the possibility of another adoption. They asked afterward if there was anything else they could pray about and I asked them to pray that Pete would not have to leave town the next week. Pete and I began a week of fasting and prayer. I sent email notes to the two families I knew that had adopted older boys from the same orphanage.

On Monday morning, Pete found out he was able to cancel his business trip which allowed him to catch up on some things at work and gave us some much needed family time in the evenings. Later that week, as I attempted to quietly wait, he said, “So, would we keep his Chinese name or give him an American name?” I continued trying to quietly wait to see what God was doing in my husband’s heart.

On Saturday, Pete and I drive to the post office and sat in their parking lot to call one of the families with a boy from the Shi He Zi orphanage. They were able to give us good insight into the environment there. Afterward, we talked about what God had been showing us through the week and agreed we felt we should move forward in pursuing the adoption, but wanted to give our children time to process this possibility and share any concerns they might have. That evening, we talked with all of the kids and prayed. We also agreed that we needed to pray and ask that we could continue with our debt reduction plans and find a way to do this adoption without accumulating debt.

The next week, we found out Pete’s company has a generous adoption reimbursement plan. This was a reassurance that God could make a way and provide for those things he has called us to do even if we can’t see how it will work.

On May 2, 2008, we received notification that the adoption agency had approved our application and we officially began the paper chase for Li Meng! Soon after, we found out new immigration procedures had just taken effect. It has been a long, and many times, frustrating journey. God has blessed us by providing for our financial needs along the way.

On April 15, 2009, we received our acceptance letter for his adoption from The China Center for Adoption Affairs. At that point, we were able to send care packages. We received great pictures from the orphanage and have also received a package and letter back from Li Meng!

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