out of translation

Last week was tough. It started to sink in that we probably won't get any updates on Lucy before we travel. Seems that her orphanage has a track record for not sharing info with families. Since I couldn't find out anything about her, I decided to start digging about her orphanage. After all, this will be an important piece of her story and I just needed to know something more about her life to help get me through this LOA wait.

After hours of online searching, I was able to connect with several families who have adopted from Qing Yuan City and found out there are actually 3 different orphanages in her city! One lady I found had adopted an older girl who is still in touch with her nanny in Qing Yuan. But, this nanny is affiliated with one of the other orphanages - not Lucy's. Then this family put me in touch with another lady, an American, who works for one of the orphanages. Again, the wrong one. This lady had another American friend who worked at one of the other ones in the city but still, not the right one! Then, finally, I found 3 other families who seem to have adopted from Lucy's orphanage. They sent me some photos of it and I'm pretty sure it's the one. I feel reasonably confident because, in the background of some of these photos, are toy shelves trimmed in pink - just like the one Lucy is sitting on in one of her referral photos! That was pretty cool.

So, now we at least have some pictures of what we believe to be her orphanage and know some families whose little ones also came from there. We are pretty sure Lucy is at a Half the Sky Orphanage. You can click on the link to their site if you care to learn what that's all about.

I had hoped to post on Mother's Day yesterday but our internet was down at home. I had prayed all week for some sort of Mother's Day blessing to make the day a little easier - either an update on Lucy or our paperwork. After Friday came and went, I had given up on receiving any type of news. But, on Sunday of all days, I received an email from our agency that our dossier (all the paperwork we had sent) was finally "out of translation". This is HUGE because it puts us one step closer to getting our LOA! Basically, all of the information on us has been translated from English to Chinese and we should be just a few weeks away from getting our LOA. After that, it should be 8-10 weeks to travel! As always, there can be things that change this time frame but we are grateful to see progress.

We so appreciate your continued prayers for us and our daughter. And we're still praying the Lord would move in the orphanage director's heart to send us some pictures and/or an update. God is able and we trust Him to do what is in her best interest. Either way, we're getting closer!