AND, we're OFF!!!

Wow!  Our day has finally arrived!  We are just 3 plane rides, and 2 nights from our daughter!  There is so much in my heart, that I don't even know where to begin!

First, of course, we are thankful to our Lord, who has brought us down this path to our sweet Ella Grace.  Our hearts are just bursting with joy and thankfulness!  He has provided through every step of this process, and has shown up again, just the day before we leave, to provide the rest of the funds that we needed.  We can now pay off our tickets and hotel fee's that we had to pay for last month when our Travel Approval came.

After months of searching through the special needs children who are waiting for families in China, God revealed our sweet Ella Grace to us and gave us peace from the very beginning that this was who He had planned for us to bring home as our daughter!  I will never forget that night, when I came upon her picture, and just gasped!  I just loved her instantly!  And when I showed Brad, the next morning, there was NO hesitation!  Our decision doesn't make sense to the world, but our decision made sense to Him, and because of that, we know that she is just perfect for us!  I have that first picture that we ever saw of her sitting beside my bed in a little frame that says "May the Lord's unfailing love surround you."  He has surrounded her the past 4 years, living in an orphanage, and we can't wait to be part of that promise to her!  We already love her so much, and have never met her!

To our friends and family who have lovingly supported us through this process.... there are really no words!  You have become His hands and feet, as you have prayed, given, encouraged, and been so excited to go through this journey with us.  We have been so blessed to have you in our lives!  We love you all so very much!  Our prayer is that God would use our story to somehow impact you!  We would love to see every single one of you bring home an orphaned child, no matter special needs, healthy, international, or domestic.  There are so MANY children out there who need loving families, and we know so many of you would be perfect.  You all know us.... we are not rich!  God is much bigger than the hindrances that we can come up with to not follow through on His command to love these little ones.

Please continue to pray as we fly for many LONG hours!  We are stopping in Japan, then heading on to Hong Kong, where we stay the night, and then fly on to NanChang, where we will meet Ella Grace on Monday, which will be Sunday night here in the states.  We hope to be able to skype home on Sunday night, so the kids can see their new sister!  We are going to miss those 3 like crazy!!

If you're following along, we are going to love hearing from you while we are in China!  You can leave comments below, and I have set it up where you can leave comments anonymously, you don't have to have a blogger account to leave a comment.  Just be sure to sign your name, so we know who left the comment!  We will try to update here as often as we can, but we have a backup plan (SALLY!!) if blogger won't work for us!  There will be at least blurbs on here, and of course, pictures!

Next time you hear from us, we'll be VERY close!