Just in case you forgot what she looks like...

Travel to China

We just got an email from AWAA letting us know they put a packet in the mail with more information about travelling to China! We're in AWAA Travel Group 116!

Excerpt from the email:
"The typical timeframe from referral acceptance to travel is 7-9 weeks. We will have tentative travel dates within the next 2 weeks. Concrete travel dates cannot be established until we have received travel letters (usually arrive within 3-5 weeks) and Consulate appointments."

They also gave us a detailed list to go through to make sure all our paperwork is updated and not expired or anything else that would delay the process. AWAA does such a GREAT job of dotting the T's and crossing the I's. What a relief that they are so organized and efficient. Really take SOME of the stress off of us during the process.

They have also created a Yahoo! Chat Group for those who are traveling together to China. We'll be able to get to know each other and share our referral pictures and neat stuff like that. I know in our LID (Log In Date) Group 219, it was pretty much an SEC crew. But, our travel group will include Groups 217, 218 & 219. So, the mix might shift.

Package should arrive in less than a week.

Bei Hai research

Found out some really neat information about Jada's hometown, Beihai.

It is located on the south coast of China, near the Vietnam border. It has some of the nicest beaches in China and off the shore of Biehai are some of China's best PEARL BEDS. (Put your requests in now, first come first serve, supplies last until suitcases are full!!)

Looks like Beihai is a beautiful place with alot of parks and natural attractions.

I also found a great orgination called Half The Sky. This is a quick description from their site:

"Half The Sky was created by adoptive parents of orphaned Chinese children. Our purpose is to enrich the lives and enhance the prospects for the babies and children in China who still wait to be adopted, and for those who will spend their childhoods in orphanages. We establish early childhood education, personalized learning and infant nurture programs in Chinese welfare institutions to provide the children stimulation, individual attention, and an active learning environment."

They are involved currently in 22 orphanages in China and Beihai, where Jada is at, is one of them. They even have programs where you can volunteer to go to China and help expand the programs and have time to spend with the children in the orphanages. I have a feeling this won't be our only trip to China or even Beihai. There's nothing more we'd like is to have Jada go back and be a part of helping orphans from her home town.

We also found a Yahoo! Group dedicated to parents who have and are adopting from Beihai. Now we have even more specialized resources to make our trip as smooth as possible with as little surprises as possible.

Alot of good information available out there for us. We intend to be as prepared as possible without actually experiencing the trip.

New Jada Pic

Here's the "good" picture of Jada Liu Xin Lambert. It's better because she's looking right into the camera. We are pretty amazed how healthy she looks. We compared her stats against growth charts for Chinese babies and she's in the 75% percentile for height and weight.

The paperwork indicated she isn't crawling yet and she can't walk unless someone has her two hands. She responds to her name being called, she laughs aloud, and some other stuff I can't remember. But, from other things they've indicated, she seems to be a little ball of fire. The box with "sits quietly by herself" was left UNCHECKED!! So, she likes gettin' into stuff.

We are deciding whether or not to have the baby shower before or after we go. Anyone with suggestions or experience, feel free to give input!

I'm amazed at the traffic this site is getting today. As of right now, 8:54pm CST, we have had 140 visits today! That's definately a record!

Thanks again for everyone's support and encourgement! The response has been overwhelming! It's so good to have good family and friends to share this with and celebrate this moment with. To see people get so emotional for us during this time is really special. We love you all and it's good to know we are loved.

God Bless You All!

Here's how it happened

Yesterday at 1:30pm, the phone rang. It was Laurel Ludwick from AWAA calling to let us know we had been given a referral. This is Brandi on the phone with Laurel.

This is when we found out her name, birthday, height, weight, head and chest measurements. She tried to describe the picture, but we wanted the real thing. She told us they were sending a next day package with her pictures and other information.

I worked nights last night. So, I came home and went to sleep on the couch. I woke up once at 8am, then again at 9:30am. That's when I looked out the window and saw the FEDEX guy coming down the road.

He saw me waving and pulled into the driveway.

This is Glen. The best freakin' FEDEX driver in the universe!

This is me holding the package. Brandi made me promise not to open it. So, I had to jump in the shower, brush my teeth and run over to HPC so we could open the packet.

That's when we saw her for the first time. Jada Liu Xin Lambert. There is one other picture of her standing in her crib, holding the rail and looking right into the camera. But, Brandi wouldn't let me have that one.

Then we had to sign the acceptance letter. This needs to be in the hands of AWAA personnel by June 29, or our travel will be delayed.

Brandi signing the acceptance letter.

That's it. We mail off the letter and we should be getting travel plans in the next 2-3 weeks.

When I can get Brandi to let go of that other picture, I'll put it up. We are really numb right now. Brandi had some things to do at work so we only had a couple of minutes to enjoy the moment. Then I have to work nights again tonight. So, it may be a day or two until we can get together and really let it soak in. But, today was a good day.

Nice to meet you Jada, you are more beautiful than we imagined. We'll be there soon!

Love, Mom & Dad

Here's Jada!!

Jada Liu Xin Lambert

Hope Arising

"...weeping may go on all night, but joy comes in the morning." - Psalms 30:5

I think this pic does a good job of describing what's going on in me and Brandi's hearts right now. It's real easy to forget the disappointments of the last 6 years, now that we know Jada Liu Xin (or "J-Liu" as a good friend of ours called her today) is on her way home.

The joy of knowing for sure, knowing that our family is set, that joy is slowly overtaking the disappointments of the past. We knew that this day was coming but, when you're in the middle of the storm, it's just so hard to see the silver lining of the clouds.

"And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with singing, with everlasting joy on their heads. They shall obtain joy and gladness, And sorrow and sighing shall flee away." - Isaiah 35:10

I like this scripture too. Many times when we worried about the cost of adoption, Tommy & Aimee reminded us to consider it a "ransom" to free Jada from loneliness and lack of a family. I'm sure the attention we will give her that she is missing in the orphanage will cause her sorrow and sighing to go away.

"For I will turn their mourning to joy, Will comfort them, And make them rejoice rather than sorrow." - Jeremiah 31:13

God has been so faithful.

Adoption Workshop

Interested or curious about adoption?

His Heart For Orphans, the HPC adoption ministry, is having a FREE Adoption Workshop on August 5, 2006 from 8am to 12pm.

This is a very informative workshop that covers biblical aspects of adoption and general information that will put you way ahead of information chasing.

Check out HPC's website for more information.

Introducing Guo Liu Xin

YEEEHAAAA!!!

AWAA just gave us a phone call at 1:30 pm today!! We have our little girl!!!

Her birth name is Guo Liu Xin and her forever name will be Jada Liu Lambert. She was born July 26, 2005. So, she will be a little over a year old when we get her. She's from the thriving metropolis of Beihai in Guangxi Province.

During a medical exam on 3/2/06 she had the following statistics:
Weight 18.7lbs.
Height 27.16in.
Chest 17.32in.
Head 16.34in.

She is an orphanage called the Social Welfare Institute of Beihai. We were hoping for a foster kept baby, but this is what was supposed to happen.

Some neat info: July 26 is Brandi's grandfather's birthday and his name was Luther, so with her having the same birthday and her name being Liu (pronounced 'Lou'), it was an easy decisioin to keep her first name as her new middle name.

AWAA will send a FEDEX package tomorrow morning that will include pictures and more detailed notes from medical exams.

Laurel from AWAA said she is beautiful. She has a round face, rosy red cheeks, full red lips and hair that's going everywhere! The referral pictures are usually a little rough looking and they usually change a good bit from the referral pics to when we pick her up.

Also, it is tradition in China to shave the baby's hair on their first birthday. But, since she is in an orphanage, they may not do it, but then again, they might do it. So, she may have a bald head when we get her. We'll see.

So, tomorrow we'll post pics and other info. But we have phone calls to make and fun to have.

Thanks again to all

Gered & Brandi

I hate RUMOR MILLS...

but it's all we got to go on right now. We've been checkin on this site. Seems to be someone in China who has alot of contacts in CCAA.

The latest is that the documents will arrive at AWAA from China on Monday.

So, we get to stew this weekend and wait for Monday.

We're ready to move on past this whole "Patience" learning phase. But, we are pretty sure the "rejoicing" and "celebration" phase will be alot longer than the hard stuff.

More to come. Thanks to everybody for the emails and comments. It's good to know we have so many people sharing this moment with us.

No phone call today (YET) but we still were busy

We went to Metairie this morning to get our fingerprints updated and as usual with this whole process, it did not go without some exciting moments.

We wanted to leave early in case traffic was bad and we did good, we got to Metairie about 7:38am and our appointment was for 8:00am. So, we saw an IHOP a block away and went to eat. We ordered and before we knew it, it was 7:58am. So we asked for our ticket, paid it and left... WITHOUT EATING!! We did get a glass of OJ and Apple juice out of the deal. It was our fault, we should have just waited after our 8am appointment.

So, we rushed over to USCIS (United States Citizenship & Immigration Services) checked in and the next adventure began. We got our number called and went in to get fingerprinted and I had shorts on and they noticed my Pooh tattoo.

One of the girls said she had a Pooh tatoo also. Well, it was exactly like mine except instead of the honey pot, she had Piglet's severed head in Pooh's hands!! That's no lie.

Then, after they digitally scanned our fingerprints they had to have another agent verify all the information. Well, the Piglet killer came over to verify all my information and before she saved all the data, she accidentally hit the computer's POWER button! All gone! Had to do it all again.

But other than that it went well. All that happened while we were nervously waiting for our cell phones to ring with a call from AWAA to let us know our pictures and biography of Jada was on the way.

Hoping to post the exciting news soon. Thanks for checking in.

Oh, the suspense!!! AGONY! AAGGOONNYY!!!

This was posted on the Chinese Consulate for Adoption Affaires today at 2pm:

"The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before June 28, 2005."

Now, our Log In Date is June 28, 2005. So, we don't know if that means "on or before" June 28, 2005 (YEAH) or "before but not including" (BOOO) June 28, 2005.

So, we just wait for the phone call!!! But, it's looking GOOD!!

More to come!

Edit: According to previous referral announcements, whenever they give a date, the LID's for that date ARE INCLUDED!!!

WHOOOOHOOOOO!!!!!!

Happy Father's Day...

...to me!!

"your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." - Psalms 139:16 (NIV)

Long ago, the Lambert Family was put together, as ordained by God: Gered, Brandi & Jada. Jada is alive, she's probably already 5-8 months old and she's still somewhere in China but, she's my girl and I'm her dad, only about 8,000 miles and an introduction stand between us.

So, Happy Father's Day to all, myself included.

State of Mind

Brandi & I had a good talk today at lunch. One of her awesome co-workers at HPC gave us an encouraging scripture. Of course, I can't remember what it was at this moment, but it centered around standing in faith.

We talked about how hard it has been for us to speak in faith out loud. We've been ready to start a family for 6 years. We've gone through times of studying God's Word on faith and still He's said, "Not yet." That sort of deters you from continually saying, "We're getting pregnant this month in Jesus' Name." Then, not getting pregnant.

Where does that leave us? Do we not have enough faith? Is there something we are doing to not please God? Is there a list of things we need to do or say in order for God to answer our prayers? These are some of the things we've thought about along the way. I beleive God loves us way too much to treat us like that.

So, what do we do now? We simply wait on God. I told Brandi that I have faith that God will make it all worth it in the end. I don't have faith on specific occasions, I have faith that the end of this journey will result in both of us being more Christlike. He's in the changing heart business. Imagine how spoiled and useless children would be if we just gave them whatever and whenever they wanted it. What could they learn from that? I believe we have to go through these hard times to build faith, character, perseverance and hope.

I have learned that God is way smarter than me. I'm not smart enough to figure out when we're getting pregnant or why this adoption has been delayed 6 months longer than it usually takes. What I have faith in is that when it all comes together, I will once again wonder why I doubted Him. I know that when it is all said and done, the joy and peace that will result in this journey will far outweigh the hurts and disappointments.

Think about this. I'm not sure how this ties in to this post, but it ran across my mind this week. The Bible says that it is God's will that none should perish. So, is hell empty? No. As a believer who is Heaven bound, it's hard for me to justify complaining about things not going my way when Jesus came down to earth, suffered, died and was buried for our sins, to save ALL OF US from eternal separation from God and still some refuse His free gift of salvation.

So, we don't have it that bad, do we?

Special thanks to the Gregoires!!

We'd like to give a very special thanks and introduce this family who invited us to their home last night.

Meet the Gregoires. Keith & Roxane and their children Brooke, Mallory and little MaKenna (on her sister's shoulders). MaKenna became part of her forever family September 19, 2005.

This wonderful family is friends with Brandi's 1st cousin. They were excited that we were adopting from China through AWAA just as they did. Last night they opened their home and family to us and it really was a special night for me and Brandi.

First of all, we were excited to see MaKenna so happy and well adjusted to her forever family. She was playing, smiling and interacting with her family. She even managed to send a couple smiles and giggles to me and Brandi. It was very encouraging to see first hand how blessed that little girl is to be with such an awesome family who was meant for her. Mallory and Brooke was great with her and helped out mom and dad the whole time we were there. It was good to see a family working together serving each other the way God intended.

Next, they let us watch the "Gotcha Day" video when they saw MaKenna in person for the first time and got to hold her. The whole family got to go, mom, dad and the 2 girls. What an awesome trip for the kids. They'll never forget that experience. Both girls are ready to go back and get another sister.

We got the inside information on what to bring, what not to bring. What to wear, where to shop, what to eat, what NOT to eat, what to expect and what not to count on. They really removed the element of the unknown, which of course is the primary source of fear. It was really a good time for me and Brandi.

An interesting note: The Gregoires are one of three families IN THEIR SUBDIVISION who adopted from China through AWAA! We met one other littler girl, Sidney, who found her forever family in their neighborhood too. Sidney was also obviously well adjusted, happy, outgoing and lovable. They told us there were only two families in the whole state of Nebraska that have adopted from China and they have 3 in their subdivision. That's pretty neat.

So again, thanks so much to the Gregoires!

Fingerprints

For the purposes of adoption, our fingerprints were only good for 15 months. So, they expire in July. We need to go and get fingerprinted again. This wouldn't be a big deal but Katrina wiped out the office in New Orleans.

So, we had to send a letter to the Department of Homeland Security's Department of U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services in Memphis, TN. We were ready to go to the nearest office in Jackson, MS to get refingerprinted. Thankfully, the office has reopened and relocated to Metaire, LA.

We'll be making an appointment this week to ride to Metaire and getting refingerprinted.

Waiting...

Brandi & I were talking about how close we are to getting Jada and how we are SOOOO ready to get to China. There's a good chance we'll be spending September 4, our 13 year anniversary in China getting Jada. What a great anniversary gift, I won't even have to shop or listen for clues as to what she wants. ;)

Recently, we've been noticing how many Asian families there are just in Gonzales. It's so cool to see little Asian girls, it just gives us hope and something we can actually see and imagine running after her.

AWAA sent us the verse for the week:

Hebrews 10: 23-25 (NASB)
“Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.”

The "day drawing near" in this verse refers to when we will see Jesus face to face, but I believe it can also mean when Brandi and I get to see Jada face to face. As I've posted before, we have had many good friends and family encouraging us and stimulating us to do good.

We have to purposely remember the good things that have happened during this season in our lives and know they by far outweigh the bad or disappointments. Thanks again to all those who keep our eyes on the big picture and help us avoid tunnel vision, focusing on the disappointments.

Thanks again everyone. We are blessed.