6 years ago today...

I had been moping around the house, and I had just finished convincing myself that, in fact, we would not be adopting from China after all. After reviewing our paperwork, the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA) had clearly deemed us unfit to be parents at all.

Referral announcements from fellow adoptive parents had begun hitting my e-mail group (APC - Adoptive Parents China) two days earlier. Based on the date that our paperwork was Logged-In at the CCAA this should be our month to receive our referral.

But we didn't get a call...

and we still didn't get a call...

and we STILL did not. get. a. call.

They obviously were NOT going to refer us a child.

EVER.

Or so I had convinced myself.

And then....Jas showed up at home.

During the middle of the day.

As glad as I was to see him...he should NOT have been home during the middle of the day.

And then I realized what was going on...

Our contact at our adoption agency had called him and told him to get home...so we could take "The Call" together.

I cried.

And I cried.

And cried some more.

And then Jill called us and we found out that the Lord (and the CCAA) had indeed seen fit to match us with a precious child...Cen Ye Gui...and she was waiting for us in Hengfeng, Jiangxi, China...

The notes I took from that conversation

Delay after delay had caused our paperwork to be sent to China 5 months later than **I** had planned. (Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails. Proverbs 19:21) ...but it had arrived in China at just exactly the right moment to be matched with this precious child...

As I looked at her eyes in this last picture below - the eyes that are looking right back at you - I knew that our lives had just changed forever.


And for that we praise the Lord.