Three Sweet Boys that Need Families!

Our adoption agency, Madison Adoption Associates, that we used to adopt Joy has a yahoo group that they post available children on. The kids are given English names just to make it easier on families to ask questions about them. The kids don't go by these names but have Chinese names and then their forever families name them. Here are three little boys that I was drawn to:

Aiden is 8 years old and has thalassemia.

Weston is 5 years old and has a corrected club foot.

Elvin reminds me of our Joshua. He has a post operative cleft and is 4 years old like our Joshua. Someone please bring this baby home. I can't imagine life without our Joshie.

You can email kerry.maa@comcast.net for more information on them and others. All you need to do to look at children's files is fill out a family information sheet from them. It doesn't cost anything to fill this out. At the very least you could fill it out and see children to pray for as God leads.

If you are interested in finding out more about adoption in general, having children with medical needs, or funding an adoption feel free to email me. There are so many options for help if you need it. I don't think money should ever keep a family from adopting and am willing to offer how we have adopted twice with no debt by the time we returned home.

On a personal note, Joy has healed well from her teeth surgery. She is continuing to adjust well and was able to talk to her Nai Nai in China last weekend. We took a leap of faith in video QQing them and it turned out to be so sweet. Nai Nai wanted to see everyone else in the family too.  We all said hello. They talked for about 30 minutes then we had to go to church. We've explained to Joy that we can try to talk to Nai Nai again this weekend. Foster care in Guilin, Grace and Hope Foster Care, seems to be such a wonderful organization for children from Guilin. We are blessed to have Joy's foster family as extended family and that we are able to stay in touch with them.

This is why we LOVE our church!!

We have only been a part of Hopewell Baptist Church for about a year but this video is not the exception there. It is very common to see people being saved here and around the world. The people at Hopewell are not afraid to get their hands dirty and love people. This group is in India and over the past few days has also been ministering to people at Mother Teresa's House of the Dying.

What a blessing to be part of a church that loves God and loves people and is willing to work in God's Kingdom! To watch the video just click below:

Hopewell Mission Team in India

Just a quick update to say that Joy is doing extremely well. Her teeth look great and her mouth actually looks better than it did before surgery. Her gums are less swollen. It's so nice to see her smile and see white instead of brown and black decay. Every morning she comes down and shows me something else about her mouth that has healed. This morning it was that most of the stitches in the front part of her mouth are gone. She had to have 4 stitches to help hold things together so it wouldn't bleed too much. The surgery lasted about 1 1/2 hours and we absolutely love our new pediatric dentist. If you live in the Gainesville, Ga area and need a good children's dentist Kid's Dentistry, Dr. Vaughn, is awesome. He has really been such an answer to prayer because of Joy's lack of English skills but he is just great with her. Joy slept in recovery with us for about 2 1/2 hours so I think it really helped to sleep off the anesthesia. Then she slept all the way home too and has been pretty much back to her normal self since then. I've been giving her Motrin and Tylenol because when it wears off she does say her mouth hurts.

Thanks for your prayers! God has answered them for sure and made this easier on her!

Grace's Birthday

We had VBS last week at church. Joy made some new friends and they all had a great time. They sang on the stage and all did so well. I am so impressed with how outgoing Joy is and Joshua has come so far even that he wanted to get up with Isaac and not cling to us to sing.

This weekend we celebrated Grace's 10th birthday. Wow I feel old! I'm gettting out of the "Have toddlers" group and moving into the "Have preteens" group. Clayton and I took her out to dinner by herself Friday, then Saturday she had a friend party, and Sunday was a party with our extended family. What a weekend! I think she feels birthday'd out. She's upstairs playing her new violin... she starts lessons this week.

Joy continues to do well. We were able to clarify what her perceptions of her forever family might be and as it turns out she doesn't seem to have any. I'm not sure what the "Learn English and in 5 months go back to China" was all about. Maybe she just looks at 5 months as forever away and assumes once she finishes school she'll go back. The person from Guilin that talked with her felt like she understood that when she is an adult she can go back to visit. We hope to go back with her before then but at least she sees us as a permanent situation. We are grateful for all that and she continues to seem super happy.

Last night I made cabbage and she looked in the bowl, put it up to her face, and breathed it in. For me... it's smelling the smell of my grandmother's homemade noodles... for her it's cooked cabbage. It was sweet. We also are putting chopsticks at everyone's plate now because a few days ago it was her turn to set the table and she did this. I had stopped because she had stopped wanting to use them but we've started it back up again. Joy also loves it that we are trying to learn Chinese. She is learning English much faster than we are learning Mandarin but today we were reading a book together that has English, pinyin, and Simplified Characters and she said one of the Chinese words wrong and I actually was able to correct her. She said "Good Job Mommy". I thought the same thing. Who knows how many words she's said incorrectly without me knowing but at least I caught this one.

I'm also trying to work on redoing our blog so that we can advocate for kids that God brings into our lives. My main focus will be kids that we are made aware of through Caring for China, An Orphan's Wish, Grace and Hope Foster Care, and Madison Adoption Associates Camps in China. These are all organizations that helped Joshua and Joy and us on our adoption journeys. I plan on included grant organizations that us and those we know have used to help with the financial aspect of adoption. If there is anything else that you think of that would be helpful please let me know. My hope is that I can advocate for children needing familes and provide help for families that are considering adoption.

Joy has her surgery to remove her 14 baby teeth on Wed., June 16th. They are all rotten and infected so they have to be removed and the infection taken out. She will be at Egleston and it'll be outpatient so she'll be in good hands. Please pray for her this week. We are going to get her and Faith into an orthodontist together after her mouth heals!

The honeymoon is starting to end....

There have been a few signs that the honeymoon is beginning to end for Joy Wenqian. Fun can only be a distraction for so long. It has lasted longer than I expected it to which has proven to be a good thing since it allowed us time to get to know her a little and her us. A few things have happened or been said that lead us to believe Joy has some misperceptions about adoption, us, and her foster family.

Something she said to our Mandarin teacher and friend is leading us to think that she quite possibly thinks that her birthparents are her foster parents. The truth is though that she didn't go live with them until she was about a year and a half old. I guess that they could have some connection but they are have a college age son so chances are they are too old to have her as a child but we will just have to get to the bottom of that as Joy learns English and opens up to us... we are choosing not to go through a translator to try to learn more at this point.

The other thing that she said to our friend from China is that she will learn English and then go back to China in about 5 months. She has showed no other signs that she wants to go back just this comment so we are going to use a person we know that lives in China, shares our faith in Jesus, and knows Joy from Guilin to help us find out what she believes about her new family and possibly what she was told about us in China.

Other than these things she has for the most part continued to be happy. Even saying these things she was pretty matter of fact... not sad. She is starting to shut down/ pout/ silent mourning a little more. We realized that this was her coping mechanism in China but it has become more frequent thus making me think the honeymoon is getting over. It happens when she is told no for something and we learned early on that saying no gently is really all she needs but she still will shut down, cry silent tears (not always but sometimes), and even close her eyes and pretend she is asleep. The positive thing is that she will allow us to hold her, talk to her, and love on her through it. I'm hoping that as time and language move forward she realize she can tell us her dislike at our answer instead of just shutting down. Any advice from those that have dealt with the shut down/ silent tears please give us some.... Overall she is still doing amazingly well. This is just starting to happen more and more (about once a day or every other day)! We keep holding her and trying to reassure her that she is our daughter forever even though at this point she doesn't understand those words. She doesn't seem to be pushing us away but reaching out for attention and love so that makes it easy to give it.

We went camping this week to help us gel as a family. We needed some time with just us and so the kids could kind of start to find their places again and we had a wonderful time. Joy loves riding her bike so we did a lot of that and even decided she really likes s'mores! We also swam quite a bit of which they all can enjoy together. Here are some photos of our camping trip.

We are going to enjoy a few relaxing days at home... after getting home Grace had to get two teeth extracted unexpectantly so that made for quite a Friday yesterday! She got $20 from the tooth fairy though (yes that is alot but after watching it happen I thought it was so worth it!!)

Joy will have all 14 of her baby teeth removed on June 16th because they are all rotten and infected. The blessing is that all of her adult teeth look good and alot of them are in just behind the baby teeth. Never a dull moment!