The Road To Ren

During our journey, we've been so blessed to meet some wonderful families who we would never have known if we weren't adopting Maia. One family who is quickly becoming very special to us is adopting precious "Ren" (the cutie pie in this picture). Ren is in Maia's orphanage and is being adopted by Mark & Elaine from the Washington D.C. area. Elaine & I first found each other through the yahoo group our agency sponsors for families adopting from Wuxi, and our families are soon going to be meeting each other in person in September!

Let me back up a little bit and share our story. Elaine sent a post to our adoption yahoo group back in the spring, searching for other families with children with the same special need that Maia has. (For our children's privacy, I won't be posting anything about their special needs on our blog). I responded to Elaine's post, and we began sharing our stories and building our friendship through email. Since Mark & Elaine had been matched to Ren earlier than we were matched to Maia, it looked like they would most likely travel to China long before us. But while we were "paperchasing", our families each faced different, unexpected delays and we just couldn't quite seem to get our dossiers to China. We encouraged and prayed for each other during the summer months, and found ourselves sending our paperwork to China only 3 short days apart!! Even more amazing.......we have exactly the same log-in date in China..........August 19th!! This means that we surely will travel TOGETHER to bring our children home!! God is just so good!!

When Elaine and I first began emailing each other, our hope was to be a support and resource to each other for our children's special needs. What we didn't realize was that God had a much bigger plan for us......a journey together to China! She & Mark traveled to China a few years ago to bring home their beautiful little girl, Eden, who will be making the trip this time, too. The funny thing is that Eden is starting kindergarten this fall, too! One thing we prayed for was a little traveling companion for Tristan in China.......and then came Eden:) Again, God is so good!

After all these months of emailing and paperchasing, we felt we really should pick a date to meet each other for the first time! So, on September 13th, our families will meet for the first time and I can't wait!! I'm sure there will be a lot to share on my blog after that night:) If you want to hop on over to read about their family, just click HERE.