We have received our I800-A Approval!!
This is one of the things required to complete our Dossier.
(As a side note, Kirstin’s fingerprints were never accepted by the Citizenship and Immigration Service, but they allowed us to use other means of establishing she was not a criminal!)

We have a short list of things left to gather and will then be able to send it all to China.

This is very exciting!!

Some of these items are simple to obtain.
For example, as soon as Kirstin’s passport arrives, we will
submit a copy of it to Lifeline.

There are a few other items that appear to our human way of thinking
to be on the difficult or impossible side.
We will have more to tell in the future,
and for now are believing that God has a plan in our current
circumstances to provide a family, home, and future for Lucy Joy
and in doing so provide a testimony of who he is to our world!

A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows,
is God in his holy dwelling.
God sets the lonely in families…
Psalm 68:5-6a

This time it is for Lucy Joy’s Nannies.

We hope they will enjoy the snacks and use the camera to take pictures of Lucy and the other children she is sharing her life with right now.

When we go to China, they will give us the camera to bring home with us.

We want to have pictures and memories of her life before she became part of our family to help tell her story, some of which has happened before we were a part of it.

“A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away.”
―Eudora Welty

Names are such an opportunity for moms and dads to speak words of life into their precious children! I suspect that even if they were not aware of it, many  times God has helped guide the thoughts of parents as they named their children. My father helped choose my name when I was born, and Kirstin means “follower of Christ” or “one who is a Christian.” How could he have known then how precious that would be to me as knowing my Lord and Savior, Jesus, is the most important thing in my life? Jason’s parents named him Jason which means “healer” or “to heal.” This is such a perfect description of who he has been in my life and the lives of so many others! How could they have known? We hope that the Lord is  guiding us in choosing a name for our Sweet Sparrow.  We so want to speak life to her and give her a name fitting for who she is, who she can become.  We have chosen to name her…

 Lucy Joy *** Rothfuss

 We plan to keep her Chinese name for her as a middle name, but as we are not at liberty to share it with you yet, I represented it with the (***)!

Lucy means “light,” “graceful light,” or “illumination.”

As we look at the few pictures and videos we have of her, we already see a spark, a light shining in them. Our prayer is that she would someday shine the light of Jesus living inside of her to the world!

The Lord is my light and my salvation…

Psalm 27:1

One of the ways we have available to us to try and make a connection with Sparrow before we go to China is by sending care packages.  It would most likely be costly and difficult to get anything through customs, so one of the guides who helps families while they are in China also offers care packages which families can order for their soon to be adopted children via email and paypal.  Despite being hard work, sometimes adoption is just plain fun… like emailing our order to Helen the other night at midnight, but since it was 2:00 in the afternoon (the next day!) for her, she quickly replied, and then sent us a paypal bill (in Chinese)!

We chose a little photo album for Sparrow.  We emailed Helen 14 pictures of our family which we captioned in English with things like “our family,” “mother,” “father,” “big sister Becca,” “big brother Spencer,” “big sister Hanna,” “little brother Michael,” “biking at the park,” “swimming at the lake,” and “sisters cooking.”  Helen printed them and translated our captions into Chinese.  After assembling the album, Helen sent us this picture so we could see it.  Don’t you love the Chinese characters?

We received word today that Sparrow’s orphanage did indeed receive her care package and we are praying that they will share this little photo album with her and that she would be able to see it often.  We pray it will help to begin to prepare her heart for the adventure and transition she has ahead of her.

See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. 

Isaiah 43:19