My God is still in the miracle business!

Before I say anything, I want to ask you to please not share this. Our agency specifically asked us not to post about our situation on any yahoo group or public forum. Since this is my personal blog, I do want to share. But I ask you to please not post about our situation anywhere.

Secondly, I want to reiterate that our agency has a firm rule about bringing home only one child at a time. I ask you to PLEASE not think that because of our situation that this is something that our agency allows. It is not, and our situation is completely miraculous-- nothing they ever even requested.

Now. Where do I begin? I am going to try to make an incredibly long story short... And yes, it has been almost impossible to keep this a secret for the past few days.

I guess I should start by saying that we knew before we even found Grace that our agency had a rule about adopting two children at once. They had made this decision and not taken it lightly. While we always knew that it would be nice if we could go in one trip for both Charlie and Grace, we never questioned our agency's rule. We had people mentioning from the moment we saw Grace that they were praying for us to "somehow be able to travel for both in one trip." And while at the beginning, I prayed along, I soon began to just explain that it's against our agency's rule and we would be going in two trips. We worked on our dossier, fully expecting to meet Charlie in April/May and Grace in the fall.

On Wednesday, March 17, our dossier for Grace went to China. We were DTC and one huge step closer to our girl. What we didn't know at that time, is that our Letter of Acceptance was being issued THAT DAY. (It was the 18th in China.)

Fast forward to Friday. Mom gets a call from our agency and they inform her that we have a big decision to make. Mom was expecting the worst, but instead, got some pretty amazing news.

Our agency was just as stunned as we were upon hearing it. They had no idea. They have never mentioned a thing or ever asked the C2A2 for us to go to China in one trip. Yet, our agency received an email asking if we would like to bring home Charlie and Grace at the same time. Although this is typically against their rule, since the C2A2 had already approved us to adopt both at once, our agency decided to let us make the decision. Mom quickly said YES. After she calmed down a bit, we decided to ask some questions on timing, as we didn't want Charlie to wait too much longer, and if we had Charlie's TA before Grace's LOA, then we would go ahead with 2 different trips (our agency had said that our LOA would be expediated. We just didn't know how long "expediated" was.)

Our question was answered on Monday when Mom got the call that our LOA was here. The craziest thing about it all is that our dossier arrived in China on Monday, 3/22. Our LOA arrived at our agency on Monday, 3/22. This is UNHEARD of. It's just not something that happens.

We were blown away. I don't think there's any other way to describe the feelings. We were in complete and utter shock and amazement, blown away by God's perfection. Even now that our LOA has arrived here, we have held it, seen it, signed it, and sent it back... it is still hard for me to comprehend the fact that Grace's LOA is here.

I don't know why I ever doubted Him and His perfect timing. Isn't this so like God? These are the kinds of things he does... He blows us completely out of the water and does things that are honestly unbelievable. Just because He can. I have no doubt that God has amazing things planned for this little girl's life. I just can simply not believe that we have our LOA for her. Did I mention that things like this just. don't. happen?

To GOD be the glory, great things he has done.

We are expecting to travel to China at the beginning of June. We will be there for around 3 weeks... a week in each province and a week in Guangzhou. Oh and by the way......... we now have a dossier which, in our agency's words, is "just waiting for the next adoption." :)