Pot Holes

Hello, again!

I know most of the blog  posts you've seen from me have been positive ones, and for the most part, this has been a very positive adoption journey, especially when compared to the journey that some of our other friends have faced/ are facing.

However, that's not to say that there haven't been some pot holes along the way-- those bumps in the road that make you say, "Ouch!"  Sometimes you keep on going and hope that it didn't do any damage, and sometimes you get a flat tire.

Well, the past couple of weeks, we've hit a couple of pot holes-- one that is an ouch (although for us, a big ouch), and one that required a flat tire to be changed. 

First, the big ouch.  Many of you received our eight updated pictures of our child several weeks ago.  Everyone remarked on how cute he was, and he is cute, no doubt about that.  However, this mama didn't think this child had the same face as the child we saw in the video that we received at the time of referral.  I thought, "Not the same face, he grew a LOT in three months, and why do the reports state that he is walking with assistance and only standing for 30 seconds on his own, but he is doing a little gymnastics move in one of the pictures?"  Howie and I looked and looked to see any hint of a similarity.  "How about the ears?  Are his ears the same?  Yeah.. looks like it.  Oh, his hairline!  Now, not many kids have a hairline like that; that must be our child.  You know, maybe the video wasn't as recent as the orphanage and our agency said that it was.  That would explain the huge change."  After two weeks of tossing these questions around in our heads, we finally asked if it was possible that a mistake had been made.  The woman on the China team looked at his pictures, at the reports, back to the video, and concluded that these eight pictures were not of our son.  They were pictures of a boy who was referred to another family about the same time as our son was matched with us.  So... then began the process of trying to get those eight pictures out of our minds.  The China team profusely apologized for the mistake and promised updated pictures of OUR son soon.  We have yet to receive them.  We're not the only ones with our agency waiting to receive pictures of our children, either, so we have no idea when or if we will get them.  That's a big ouch for us waiting to see how our cute son is doing, how he's growing, etc.

Then this week came the flat tire.  We had hoped to send immigration paperwork out early this week.  I had posted on Facebook that it was ready to go.  I had a couple more things to do and print off at that point, but that was all.  We received our addendum from our local adoption specialist, and it had two incorrect pieces of information on it. We informed her about the mistakes, and then she realized that some of the information that we spent weeks collecting didn't even need to be on there.  Weeks wasted on that, delaying our trip to see our son.  The information required her to delete-- not add-- items to it.  We're on our third day of waiting for the fix, and hopefully-- though no promises-- we'll be able to pick it up today and mail these immigration documents that are organized, copied for our file, and ready to go.

So... there is part of the bumpy road part of adoption.  Everyone faces it-- or something like it-- during the process.  We've had other bumps that I haven't written about, but one of my friends urged me to write about this.  It's a journey.  It's our reality at this moment.  We still trust that God will get us through it.  He will help us change this flat tire, and we'll keep going, though it may take us longer to get there than what we had originally hoped.  It may cost us some money to get a replacement (home study update). However, He will use it for His purpose.  We will make friends in China-- other couples who are adopting at the same time-- and maybe that's why.  We'll find out further along the journey.

At this point, we welcome prayers for an updated, corrected addendum that immigration will accept and a smooth, fast-moving process of our documents at immigration.  As always, we welcome prayers for our little Gabriel. 

Thanks for being there with us through it all!

Jenn and Howie