Levi Sees His Family!

Today, the staff at New Day told Levi he had a family...us! I would say he looks happy!! So are we, Levi! We are working as fast as we can to get things moving along. It has only been 5 weeks since we were approved to adopt Levi and we are almost done with our home study, the dossier will be ready to send out next weekend, and on March 3rd we got our PA from China, which unbelievably came in 1 week. That is amazing!! I have not been good about updating because we have been trying to knock out all the paperwork as fast as possible. I will try to post our timeline in the next week or so. We actually sent a care package to Levi on March 13th, but it has yet to arrive so we emailed our photos to Levi so they could tell him about his new family. Hopefully, it will arrive soon. It had a photo album, a teddy bear, and some dum dums for his preschool class. Below are photos the staff at New Day took for us of Levi seeing our pictures for the first time.

Adoption Necklaces for Sale

Our 13 year old daughter, Katie, makes jewelry. She wanted to do something to help raise money to bring Levi home. So she came up with the idea to sell adoption necklaces on her website.  If you would like to see some of her items, hop on over to http://wwwwaterlillies-katie.blogspot.com/2012/03/adoption-necklaces-for-sale.html.  Here is an example of one of her designs.

Introducing.....

Love Never Fails

For about a year now Mark and I knew God was going to call us to adopt again.  We also felt that it would be a toddler boy.

Proverbs 24:12 says, “Once our eyes are opened, we can’t pretend we don’t know what to do.  God, who weighs our hearts and keeps our souls, knows what we know, and holds us responsible to act.” 

We knew we had the love and the room, and that God would provide the rest.  In our minds and hearts we figured it would be Taiwan again, and a healthy boy.  God’s heart and mind were different.  He has placed on our hearts a little two and a half year old boy in China.  He is not healthy.

 I first saw his picture on December 9^th.  I felt he was our son.  But he was not from Taiwan, and he had a cleft lip/palate? God worked on my heart that day and I requested his file.  Come to find out he not only had a cleft lip/palate, but a complex heart condition as well.  I put his file aside.  No way could we do this.  But again, God had other plans.  

A month passed and I came across an updated photo of him.  He looked so happy and healthy.  I emailed the agency and ask if they had gotten an updated medical along with the photos. They had not.  The photos were from a missionary that had visited. She was able to tell me he was staying at new day foster home, a facility for kids with medical needs. It is Christian run and houses around 30 kids. I found New Day online and wouldn’t you know the first child I clicked on was our little guy. I contacted New Day and asked about him but they replied that they were unable to share medical information about the children. It was against orphanage rules. But she did say I could request a medical update through our agency.  So, I emailed Erin and asked her to request an update. She said she would, but that it was a long shot in that the orphanages either take forever to reply or do not reply at all.  The next day I woke to an email from Erin... with the update.  Erin was stunned. She said she has never experienced an update coming that quick.

Again, the heart condition overwhelmed me. I decided to post his condition on a yahoo chat group. A few hours later I received an email from a college student saying her parents were adopting a child with the exact diagnosis, minus the cleft lip/palate.  She said that it is a huge diagnosis and life threatening.  She said her parents were at the same place we are a few months ago.  I emailed her back and thanked her for her honesty, but that this was just too much for us. That we just couldn’t do this.  The next morning, for whatever reason, I emailed her a picture of the little boy.  The reply I got was crazy.  She knew this little boy! She lived with him all summer while doing missionary work. It was where she met her future sister. I guess he and their; little girl are best friends.  She has videos and lots of pictures of him.  She also said he is doing very well.

So, I thought this is too much of a coincidence.  I need to share this all with Mark, who up to this point had only seen a referral photo. I emailed him a new photo with all the medicals and Mark's response was, "what do we have to do?"

We filled out an application and had things moving when the unthinkable happened. Erin called and said we had been denied this child because he and Samuel are too close in age and they had 3 other families interested without this issue.  WHAT? After all this? Lord, did we hear you wrong?  Our hearts were broken. I am not sure how God does it but somehow when He places a child in your path you just know they are yours. You have a deep love only from a photo.  I began praying, more questioning really, to hear the Lord say, "He's yours."  OK? How am I going to explain that? I kept that information to myself in case I was going crazy. I had a great peace though, and began to pray that the Lord would place this little boy in the family that was best for him. The family the Lord wanted him in, whether it was ours or someone else. Eleven days later God had cleared the path. All families backed out and we were offered his referral!

 We introduce to you, Levi Matthew Long Hai Warner…”joined in harmony” and “gift from God.”

Please join us in prayer that we can get Levi home as soon as possible for his heart surgery. We are specifically praying that his heart is in the correct position in his chest and that there is no heterotaxia. We also need prayer for guidance as we choose Levi's doctors and for our financial needs to be met.