Poor Baby....

We learned that on May 21, sweet little Meili fell and cut her head open. She was playing and fell on some door tracks. They had to take her to the doctor and get stitches. They also had to shave a small patch of her hair. She is doing well now but she was very sad and cried hard. Here are the pictures taken after she had been to the doctor.




We received our I-800 approval on the 20th and the NVC letter came on the 27th. We were very excited as this starts the Article 5 process which is the last step before the travel approval. The article 5 will be complete on June 15. The only problem is that we have learned that travel approvals have been extremely slow in coming over the last couple of months. We talked to our agency and she said hopefully things will pick up a bit before it's time for us to go. It was a pretty frustrating day to know how close we are yet really still have no idea when we might travel. We are still praying and hoping things will continue to move quickly. We really have been much faster than we expected so we will continue to hope that it is the Lord's will that we get her sooner rather than later.

This connection with have with Lisa and Meilin is amazing though. We have over 250 pictures and have learned so many things about our sweet girl. She loves babies and loves to hug and kiss them. She is very sweet and will share her toys very readily. She does not like to share her food though. She loves to watch veggie tales and sing along with them. Her best friend is cute Enoch who we would take in a second if China would let us. She is just shy of being 3 feet tall. These little tidbits of information keep us going through the hard times and we just pour over the pictures every chance we get.

Josh has been doing his Eagle Scout project the last couple of weeks and it is has turned out to be very successful. He is doing a fundraiser dinner/bake sale to raise money for supplies needed in many of the orphanages in China. He has raised over $1500.00. His goal is $2000.00 and honestly I think he will make that. The dinner is this Thursday and we have about 150 people coming. There are also many others that have donated that can't be there that night. It is amazing to see people open up their hearts and be so generous in supporting this cause.

Here are a few more adorable pictures that we have received.

What An Amazing Week!

This last week has been a whirlwind to say the least which is why I haven't posted all the amazing incredible things that have happened to us this week. It's been a little crazy around here. After we made the connection with Lisa from Beijing, she showered us with pictures. Beautiful, sweet, adorable pictures. We have enough to make Meili a baby book, we have pictures from when she was just a baby! She looks so happy and healthy. She is in such good hands. They love her and take care of her. She just glows. We will forever be grateful to these wonderful amazing ladies who are taking care of her. It is an amazing blessing she is where she is. We thought she was in Yuncheng City which is a desperately poor and deprived area. The pictures we have seen of the kids in foster homes/orphanage there are very depressing...dirt floors, rooms without walls, etc. They truly do suffer in that area of China. We feel so blessed and thank our Heavenly Father everyday that she was able to go to Beijing and be in this foster group home where her needs are being met.

We also learned of a wonderful lady named Susan. She took all the money from her wedding and asked if she could donate it to a child that would benefit from it. They chose Meili. They call her YuanYuan. :) They felt that she was a perfect candidate to have her cleft palate fixed. Right before the surgery though Yuanyuan got sick as well as her caregiver that was going to go with her. The surgery was cancelled. The amazing thing is that there was a bigger plan. Just a few weeks later, a clinic in Shanghai called to say they could do 9 surgeries free of charge but the travel expenses would not be included. Susan was contacted again to see if she wanted to donate the money that was meant for Meili to be used to benefit all 9 children. She agreed and changed the life of not 1 but 9 beautiful children. These angels in Meili's life will forever be in our hearts. And we will always be so incredibly grateful for them and their unselfish service to our sweet girl.

Day after day this week we received pictures. Most of them bringing us to tears. It has been truly amazing to see our sweet angel all grown up. We suddenly feel like she's not so far away. They went to an international fair at a school last week and had a picnic with happy meals from McDonalds. It was so fun to see these adorable pictures and know they were taken just the day before. Here are a few from that day.







Sunday was Mother's Day and I wasn't expecting any emails from her caregivers. But as I woke up Sunday morning, I decided to check. Much to my surprise, a wonderful lady named Meilin was thinking of me on Mother's Day. As I opened these emails, we were again brought to tears as we saw through pictures, Meili looking at our family picture for the first time. It was a very sweet moment for us. They also sent an adorable picture of Meili holding out a red rose and the email that said "love and flowers from Meili." What a wonderful Mother's Day we had. What an amazing woman Meilin must be to think of me and really put forth the effort to make my Mother's Day so special. It will be a Mother's Day I will never forget.






Last week, we were able to put together a care package. It was pretty crazy gathering everything up. We asked what was needed and although Meili's specific home didn't need a whole lot there are other orphanages that need a lot. We gathered up cleft palate bottles, medicine droppers used to feed the cleft palate babies when bottles aren't available, bibs, mosquito medicine, dum dums for the kids, etc. We also were given permission to send a blanket, a teddy bear, PJs, sundresses, and a photo album to Meili. We were able to send matching sundresses for her and a little girl her age in the home. Can't wait to see the pictures. It really is so heartbreaking to know that there are thousands and thousands of children that need help over there and a lot of them never get it. We are hoping to do something in conjunction with Josh's Eagle Project and raise some money to buy more supplies so that when we go over to pick Meili up, we will be able take them some of the things they desperately need.

We love this little girl more than ever! Seeing her pictures all week and seeing how she has grown has been an incredible experience for us. We feel like we already know her. We feel very humbled and grateful to see how the Lord's hand has brought us together with these ladies that are so close to Meili. We know this was under his direction and we are truly grateful. Our countless prayers over the last many months have been answered time and time again. We prayed that she would be healthy and happy and that she would know we love her. The Lord has taken care of all those dreams and hopes for us. We couldn't ask for more and we are so grateful for his love.

Miracles, Miracles, Miracles.....

As mentioned earlier, we have recently joined an email group for parents adopting in the Shanxi area. We have been able to connect with many parents and have learned a lot about the area. Of course we were always hoping we would connect with another family traveling that might be able to go to the orphanage and get pics of Meili. But then we learned that would not be a possibility. So you can imagine how incredible it was when we received an email from a lady in Bejing that actually volunteers at a foster care group home and knows Meili. She sent some pics and told us she really thought this was our daughter and that if it is, she has many more to send. Wow!! We were a little in shock as the tears started coming. We could not ask for more. She said they call her Yuan Yuan and that she is a little doll. I asked many questions and can't wait to hear back from her and get more pics of our sweet girl. She is darling and looks so healthy and happy. We know the Lord is watching over her.

Letter Seeking Confirmation....Meili Kang McKenna

You can guess we were ecstatically jumping up and down yesterday when Heidi called to let us know that our Letter Seeking Confirmation had arrived! We were really hoping for the middle of May so we were more than thrilled when it came two weeks early. It has been a whirlwind 24 hours trying to get paperwork filled out and sent off but we got everything sent today and hopefully the I-800 petition will be filled in the next few days. So according to timeline estimates we are 12-16 weeks away from finally having our baby girl in our arms. Last night as we were filling out the paperwork, our case manager cleared up some confusion. Meili's first name is Kang Yuan and last name is Dang. You'd think after all these months, we would've figured that out or someone would've told us :) So Russel rushed down to Uncle Reed's to show him the Chinese characters of her name. We had to decide yesterday exactly what we were going to name her and while we have been set on Meili for quite some time, the middle name has not been so easy. We considered just "K" even though we weren't sure if this was her middle name (Kang) or part of her last name. So as Reed is checking everything out, he tells us that the character for her first name, Kang, means peaceful. Bingo! How perfect. Meili Kang. Russel has always wanted to use Kang but I was worried that it was like half a syllable or something. Thank you Reed!! He has proved very useful.....and i'm sure will prove to be invaluable over the next several months.

We also were able to find a parents yahoo group that we joined. We learned a lot about where Meili is and the orphanage, etc. There are only about 50 children in the orphanage. Most of the children are in foster care as there are about 400 kids associated with this particular orphanage. We also found out that we will most likely not be traveling to the orphanage. We were looking forward to seeing exactly where she has been living....but we will have to save that for a future trip. We will most likely pick her up in Taiyuan which is a six hour train ride from Yuncheng City. Some of the parents we talked to have tried to go but they simply won't let them. It would also be very hard for little Meili to turn right around after a 6 hour train ride and go back. So that's a little disappointing but the city of Tiayuan looks great. There are some really neat parks there. It will be perfect as we try to help Meili adjust to us.

Everyday, our prayers are being answered. We truly have seen the hand of the Lord and know this little girl is meant to be with us. We have an amazing family that has already encompassed her with so much love. What we would do without them, I am not sure. They have been our support every step of the way. And they are absolutely crazy about her.....what more could we ask for.