Good News!

We got our letter from USCIS with the date for our fingerprint appointment! Finally, after a couple of weeks of wondering and waiting, we know that we are moving forward with the steps towards our I-171H! Our appointment is August 14. Our non-adoption lives have been full of surprises lately, so please pray that this process will continue to go smoothly. The great news is that Bill did not have any trips planned for that week, so nothing will have to be rescheduled. With his job, that is a huge blessing!

Based on this new information, we can realistically expect our I-171H to be completed by the end of September. We had originally hoped to have it by the end of the summer, but the paperwork just seems to be taking a bit longer right now. We know that God's timing will be good, and that He will open the doors that need to be open at exactly the right time. It looks like we will have a very busy rest of the summer, so hopefully, the wait won't seem so long.

In the Presence of the Great!

The school supply season is upon us! I've mentioned before that I LOVE a good bargain! Well, we've been spending some of our time in July & August the past couple of years collecting school supplies for children that might not have access to them. In the past, this has always been through church school supply drives, but this year, we have a more personal reason to donate. We are collecting supplies to give as gifts to the orphanages in Vietnam.

Now, mind you, I only buy the REAL bargains. But, somehow, this year, the bargains seem to be abounding. I have already found 9-cent crayons, 50-cent markers, 10-cent pencil boxes - and it's still just mid-July. I happened to mention it to my mother on the telephone one day, and as all good blessing stories go, she e-mailed a couple of friends, and they e-mailed a couple of friends, and well....everyone just wants to help. My parents' Sunday School class members are running around to office supply stores and e-mailing each other about the best sales of the week. Even the sales clerk at Target who innocently asked why I was buying 20 boxes of crayons offered to help, once she heard our story. My brother stunned us by providing an entire case of individual crayon packets from his restaurant.

Now, I know that some people still say really hurtful things about international adoption. (In fact, several of my adoption buddies have had some truly senseless and hurtful remarks thrown their way. I am so sorry that anyone has to hear that stuff!) But, I also wanted everyone to know how many people really care about what's happening and really are excited to help in their own little ways. I want to encourage my adoption and blogger friends to be vulnerable enough to let it be known that there are needs in adoption land. Who knows just how many people are waiting in the wings, eager to help? The sales clerk at Target sure is! If you are interested in helping too, please feel free to tag a comment on this post or just e-mail us.

"A gift opens the way for the giver,
and ushers him into the presence of the great."
--- Proverbs 18:16

Most of all, I want to say thank you to any and all of you who have given your time, your money, and your hearts to help. I wish that I could send you all a personal thank you note, for caring about us and most of all for caring about our new little boy - and lots of other little boys and girls in Vietnam. However, I don't even know any more all of the folks who might be helping and praying and caring for us in their little ways. So, I'll just offer this verse from Proverbs, and hope that your gifts have already and will continue to usher you into the presence of the great! Thank you for blessing us - may you be blessed back many, many times over!

I Just Can't Help It!

A few months ago when we started our adoption process, we passed a law in our house. No shopping for the baby until we have a referral in hand. Now, I know that a lot of you blogger gals are big-time shoppers. So, before you click that comment button to chew me out, please know that I too enjoy shopping. I really enjoy baby shopping. But, for me, filling my house with baby items without an actual baby takes me quickly to my crazy place. Bill & I thought that it would probably be hard and confusing for Will, too. Thus the "no shopping" law. (Please also note that there is NOT a no-looking law - I've picked out linens, room decorations, furniture...the list continues. But no actual items have been purchased.)

But today I broke the law. Will and I were at Kohl's, and there were soooooooo many cute little baby things. Creepers with puppy dogs and bears and trains. Little soft blue blankets and bibs. All on great summer sales - my achilles heal! My strength was waining. I probably would have bought a ton of clothes if I only had an inkling of what size to purchase. But, I didn't, so I passed through the children's clothing unscathed. (By the way, I also know that we have a trip to Branson, Missouri planned this fall, and they have one of the best outlet malls I've ever visited. They have Carter's, they have Osh Kosh, they have Children's Place. And come September, they will have a lot of my money!)

So, back to the story. Will wanted, of course, to look at the four really messy aisles of toys that they shove into a corner of the Kohl's as bribery to get kids to agree to go shopping with their parents. He was pretty good all throughout our daily errands, so I agreed. As I am standing in the heaps of Dora dolls, Matchbox cars, Thomas Trains, and other assorted toys, suddenly my eyes light up. I notice a darling, brightly colored FisherPrice Tabletop Playmat up on the shelf. It's got nobs, rattles, buttons, mirrors, balls - all those cute things that little hands love to investigate. It folds out to the size of a large placemat or folds up into a 3" X 10" packet - easily packable! It has suction cups to secure it to an airplane tray table! It is all the things I love in children's toys, and it is sitting on the shelf next to a sign that says, "All FisherPrice Toys 50% Off!"

I melted. A girl only has so much will power. And so, for $12.50 after sale (plus the travel game that I had to buy for Will because I haven't figured out yet how to buy for one child and not two!), we are officially moving into "getting ready for baby" mode. A really big step for me. But, finally, one homestudy, a three-inch binder stuffed full of paperwork, one dossier, a couple of big checks, lots of time on the blogs and forum, and a FisherPrice Tabletop Playmat later, I can say that I really think this whole thing is going to happen! We're really going to have a baby in our house!

Showers of Blessings!

What a wonderful week this one has been for all of the Dillon Vietnam families! We'd like to congratulate our adoption buddies on NINE sweet children finding their forever families this week! The last count I had was five infant girls, three infant boys, and one sweet boy from the waiting child list.

Now, for those of you who are new to the process or who are doing research on adoption, I'll add that this week has NOT been a typical one for all of us. In fact, the last referrals by our agency that I know about for certain were in late April. So, you can imagine that how glad we were that we had so much to celebrate this Fourth of July week!

(By the way, if you are reading this blog for adoption info, please, please, PLEASE do not choose your agency solely based upon how fast they can add a child to your life. Choose your agency based upon how well they care for the children in the country where you plan to adopt, how committed they are to improving the adoption process, how ethical they are in their decision-making, and how much in love with adoptive countries, families, and children they are. It just matters too much!)

So, anyways, it was great for us to see all these families come together with their new kiddos. It also has made the entire process seem incredibly real for us - this is not some distant dream way down the road, but now all the sudden, we know that our day will be here soon too!

Please pray for all of these families that their paperwork is processed smoothly, and that they will get to hold their little ones soon. Please also pray for the fantastic staff at our agency, that handles all of us with such incredible kindness and grace. This is an exciting and yet very busy time for them, so pray for perseverance, for patience (as we all may try their patience from time to time, I'm sure!), and for health for all of them.

Thanks, again, God, for gracing us with your blessings everyday! Thanks most of all for the gift of nine sweet little ones! :)

Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July, everyone!

Will and I went to the Oklahoma State Capitol to take care of some of our dossier papers yesterday. It felt like our timing was perfect, being the day before July 4, so we kind of got into the process. Pretty soon, we were taking pictures on the Capitol steps and in the rotunda like a couple of tourists. (In some ways we were, even though we only live about a 15-minute drive away. It was my first visit there in the two years we've lived here in OKC, so you know, if you haven't seen it, it's new to you!)

For those of you who are not engulfed in this pile of papers, the dossier is the official documents that go to Vietnam as our application. They include:

• a copy of our marriage certificate
• a copy of our homestudy
• a police letter for each of us stating that we don't have a criminal record
• a letter of employment for Bill & a letter for me stating that I am a full-time homemaker
• a doctor's letter for each of us giving us a clean bill of health
• copies of each of our passports

Our social worker sent our homestudy directly, so I had nine pieces of paper to submit. We also sent 6 pages of photocopied and signed application forms, but four of the six pages were in Vietnamese, so they didn't seem too real to me. All inclusive, 15 pieces of paper. I know that the agency adds a few more pages of paperwork and some pictures to this packet, but all in all, 15 pieces of paper just didn't quite seem enough to me. It just seemed like such a tiny stack of stuff to indicate how much we want to adopt a new baby boy. How can all this time, energy, effort, desire, and most of all, love, possibly fit into 15 pieces of paper?

Well, we took our pile of papers to the Capitol to have the Secretary of State's office certify the notary signatures on them. Now, this part of the puzzle is usually handled by Dillon, and it always seemed a little hazy to me. So, I thought my adoption buddies might enjoy seeing what a certified document really looks like. Each document gets its own separate certificate from the state where it was notarized saying that the notary's signature is authentic.

I admit I am glad I got to see these documents. Somehow, the big gold seal, the "STATE OF OKLAHOMA" written across the top in very impressive font, and even the little gold grommet that attaches the certification to each of my documents made me feel better. Somehow, it all seemed very official, very approved, very finished. (I just hope that the Vietnamese government sees it that way!)

Suddenly, it was hard to mail my 15 little pieces of paper off. I was a little nervy trusting them to the Kinko's guy, I admit. When he asked if my envelope contained paperwork, and I said yes, and he wrote down a declared value of $100. I immediately said, "NO!! It is worth so much more than $100 to me! In fact, it is pretty much priceless!" He looked at me like I was nuts, and said, "How 'bout $1000?" I nodded, defeatedly, knowing that I could never really express the value on this package. The Kinko's guy slapped a zero on the end of the declared value and carelessly tossed my precious cargo in an outgoing mail bag. I probably paid extra for that extra value, but I don't care. I also freely paid for the Priority Service, Automated Tracking, and some other bells and whistles. After all, this is the most important 15 pages I've ever put together in my life.

The Thanks Bank!

Our four-year-old son, Will, came running out of Sunday School this morning. He was so excited as he said to us, "Mom & Dad, I got to make a thanks bank today!" So, as usual, amidst the typical post-church flurry of kids being picked up, Sunday School papers flying about the halls, and other pandemonium, I asked casually, "What's a thanks bank?" I admit that I was concentrating on what to make for lunch, afternoon plans, and my general desire for a long nap, and I wasn't listening as well as I should. Will, however, didn't seem to notice, and began to explain, "My thanks bank is a way for me to say thank you to God for all the good things in my life. I drew pictures of the things I am thankful for and put them in the bank. It helps me remember that our word for the month in church in July is contentment."

Wow. Out of the mouth of babes, right? I stopped short there in the hall, and looked down at my sweet son, who is holding up a plain lunch bag with "THANKS BANK" written on it in red marker. He has filled it with little scraps of paper with pictures of simple things he is thankful for - the sun, a rainbow, and Mom & Dad. Suddenly, I am paying a lot closer attention as I ask him, "Will, what does contentment mean to you?" and he says simply, "It is deciding to be happy with what you've got. You and Dad should make a thanks bank, too!"

And that's what we did. Not thirty minutes after arriving home from church, we sat down with paper and crayons and made a family thanks bank. We had great fun drawing pictures of each other, Max the Dog's wagging tail, baseballs and bats, new baby brothers, swimming pools, flowers, maps of Vietnam, and crosses to symbolize Jesus. (Our Jesus portraits aren't so great, so we used a cross instead!) We are planning to keep adding to our thanks bank the rest of the summer. Will says we should get a really big bag, because we have plenty to go in it.

You know what? He's right. We have so much to go in it, that the largest shopping bag we could find would never suffice.

CONTENTMENT: It's deciding to be happy with what you've got.

As I read through Will's Sunday School paper this afternoon, the memory verse popped out at me. Phillippians 4:11-13 says, "...I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being CONTENT in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do EVERYTHING through Him who gives me strength." I'm going to try to memorize this verse in the next couple of weeks. You might want to try it, too.

As Will would say, you might even try to make a thanks bank. You might be surprised just how big a bag you really need, if you take the time to write down all your thank yous to God. For my fellow adoption buddies, I'm not saying this lightly. I know that sometimes the wait is hard. Really hard. But Will may be on to something about this contentment thing. Contentment isn't having all you want to be happy, it's deciding to be happy with what you've got. Contentment doesn't mean that we won't be crossing off squares of the calendar each day - it's more about how we fill the squares up before they get crossed off.

And maybe, just maybe, thankfulness may be the real key to the riches in God's bank. So, I'm gonna start a sideline here on our blog page of things I'm depositing in my thanks bank. On the gray days, I'm hoping it brings me some encouragement. Hope it brings you some, too.

A Quick Update!

We had a wonderful vacation this past week in Chicago. So much fun to see the city where we used to live, to meet old friends, and most of all to introduce Will to Wrigley Field! Will loved Chicago, and Bill & I have to admit that we were a bit wistful in some of our old stomping grounds. It is a fun city, especially in the summer, but I'm glad that God has us in OKC right now. God has had good plans all along for us, and right now we are in just the right place for another little boy to fly half-way around the world and join our family!

We came home to the great news that our homestudy stuff is finished, so we could go ahead and process our dossier documents. Hooray! So, without even finishing unpacking, I've been off to the doctor's office, police department, and notary's office in the past two days. Bill, in his usual style, whipped out his laptop, sent a couple of quick e-mails, and got his entire part finished in about ten minutes. Two days later, the FedEx envelopes arrived with his employment letters and our marriage certificate, and he didn't even break a sweat. I wish that I was as cool and collected as he is sometimes. All the time I spend wringing hands doesn't really get the job done any faster! A great lesson for me to learn at this point in the adoption process! :)

So, I guess when I send off this dossier packet to Dillon on Monday, we have officially hit "The Waiting List!" One prayer request for our extended family who has lovingly prayed us through this whole process is that our fingerprint appointment and I-171H would move along smoothly (and I add somewhat selfishly, RAPIDLY!) The I-171H is the final document that we need to be able to get a visa for our new child. The Vietnamese government wants to see it in our hands before we start trying to get approval to travel. We would love to have it in place so that when we are referred a child, we will have one less piece of paper between us and him. So, the sooner that one happens, the better. Hopefully, July will be a good month for us to get this last piece of the paperwork puzzle in place.

In the mean time, we plan to have plenty of BBQ's, see a bunch of baseball games, take Will to swimming lessons, and enjoy the good ol' summertime for awhile! When I actually get the suitcases unpacked, I'll try to post some Chicago highlights, so check back soon! :0)

Homestudy - Hooray!

We received the completed draft of our homestudy today! Hooray! Thanks to our great social worker and all of the Dillon staff - you guys are the best! They managed to get everything finished for us before we head out on our vacation - an extra treat.

For our friends and family not in the middle of the adoption experience, the homestudy is a critical piece of the puzzle. The homestudy report is done by a licensed social worker, who officially approves us as adoption applicants. This report goes to Vietnam along with copies of a lot of other official paperwork to describe us as adoptive parents to the Vietnamese government. It also is used here by the US Department of Immigration as official clearance to allow us to get a Visa for our new child. (The Visa officially allows us to leave Vietnam and return to the United States with our child.)

So, the moral of the story is that our homestudy unlocks the doors to the next big phase of our adoption process. We are thrilled to be moving that way! Funny, but I've never been so excited to be allowed to fill out more bureaucratic forms! :)

Attack of the Robots!

Well, Vacation Bible School is upon us! As I am writing this post, we have only one more day of robots and spaceships in our Sonforce Kids VBS theme, and we've all had a great time! Bill and Will made the robots in the pictures out of cardboard boxes, spray paint, scrap wood, and some stickers. Great job, guys! I've been teaching a class of 22 boys that are just about to enter third grade, and I have even more gratitude for elementary school teachers than ever before. The kids have been great, but man is it a lot of work to keep up with them!

Will has had a wonderful week and has learned a lot, too. Thanks to his teachers for all their kindness and hard work. One of the highlights was listening to him sing "Jesus Loves the Little Children of the World" and then tell me how that meant his brother in Vietnam! It's nice to know sometimes that our kids really get it! :)

One of our Bible stories this week was about baby Moses' mother placing him in a basket at the edge of the river to try to save his life. (If you don't know the story, the Pharaoh of Egypt had ordered that all infant Hebrew boys be killed in order to subdue the Hebrews and keep them as slaves. Moses' mother made a floating basket and hid her son in the reeds next to the river, where he was found by Pharaoh's daughter. She adopted him, and not only was his life spared, but he grew up in the palace with the best of opportunities. God used Moses' adoption to prepare him for big things in the future.)

So, I thought a lot about Moses' mother this week. How hard it must have been for her to push that little boat basket out in the water, even though she knew it might be the only way to save her son. Would I have been willing to make that choice? It may be that our future son's birth mother is thinking about the same decisions right now. Bless her for loving her son so much. May we never take for granted the love she is showing to her son. May God make us worthy of the blessings that He is pouring out on us.

I also have been thinking about the ways that God is asking me to let go of my own basket a little bit too. Am I willing in faith to let go of my children (both Will & our future son) and let God have control of their lives? Of my life, too? Do I really believe that God has the best plans for all of us, even if they aren't very easy for me? Even if they make my heart hurt sometimes? Yet again, I learn more from Vacation Bible School than the kids do! Thanks, God, that the rewards of Your plans are higher and bigger and greater than we can ever ask or imagine!

Summer Fun!

The blog gang is listing their Top 5 Summer Fun Goals. So, here are ours:

1. Visit the local Vietnamese grocery store and learn how to make at least one recipe in my new Vietnamese cookbook (or have fun trying, anyways!)
2. Eat ice cream while watching the Fourth of July fireworks - preferably at the end of a great baseball game
3. Watch the sailboats on Lake Michigan from Wrigley Field (watch out Chicago, here we come!)
4. Survive Vacation Bible School, and help our four-year-old son to enjoy his first real VBS experience. I am teaching a Second Grade Boys class, and the theme is Spy Kids in Outer Space, so I may well be fed to a robot by the end of the week!
5. Spend our anniversary on the top of a mountain. (We spent our honeymoon nearly 14 years ago in Breckenridge, Colorado, and we are going back - just the two of us!)