Holiday Prayer Request

We are still experiencing delays on the Vietnam side of our adoption. There are 24 families affected. Our adoption agency is working diligently trying to resolve the situation. They have limited options left. None of these babies can come home to their waiting families until this issue is resolved. Our families have been waiting for 2-3 years to bring a child into our homes. We have been falling in love with pictures of these children. In our hearts, they are ours already. This additional complication has made the wait torture, especially at the holidays.

Many of you have asked what you can do to help. We need your prayers!
We know that God can move mountains! Please read the prayer request
below. We would love your support. Please feel free to pass this information on!

FTIA VIETNAM Waiting Parents
Prayer Requests
On behalf of all the Waiting Parents: We have put together a list of specific things that our families and friends can pray with us about. Specifically, between now and just after the first of the New Year, we would like to blanket our situation—our children and our forever families—with prayer and fasting*.

Times for prayer
We do, of‐course, welcome your prayers at any time. But we thought we would suggest the following times (regardless of time zones) for prayer over the next 3 weeks so that there will be several periods of concentrated prayer for our children and our families:

Saturday, December 20 – Friday, January 9: 7:00am and 9:00pm
Christmas Eve & New Year's Eve: 11:30pm ‐ Midnight

Specific Prayer Requests
• For the health, safety and care of all of our children
• For peace, strength and health for the waiting parents
• For success and determination for FTIA's director and those he enlists to help the situation
• For the Police and other officials, that their hearts and minds will be softened; that that they will consider the welfare of children above all else
• For USCIS (US Immigration), that they will be reasonable, especially
in regard to the new requirements they are imposing (that they too will put the welfare of children first)

There are 24 waiting families and children. We request prayer for our group as a whole, as this situation has been very difficult for all of us.

11 Months

Today our baby boy turned 11 months old. Another month has passed. Unfortunately, we don't seem to be any closer to getting him home. Our agency director is in Vietnam again trying to make some progress. We are happy he is there. There are 24 families waiting for children from the same province. We hope and pray that there will be a resolution soon, and that all the children can join their forever families.

This holiday season has been difficult. I'm having trouble getting into the Christmas spirit again this year. We do have our tree up, and most of our presents are bought. Our little guy has gifts that will soon be wrapped in festive Elmo paper and placed under the tree. They will stay right there until he is home in our arms. Then, we can truly celebrate Christmas. A.

Thankful

We have so much to be thankful for and so much to look forward to!

He smiles a lot!

We were filled with joy when we received the following update from our agency:

(baby) can sit, but can't crawl, he moves around on his tummy. He smiles a lot, eats very well. He can pull himself up. He is quiet. He is curious about strangers. He seems a content boy. He has 2 upper and 2 lower teeth. He is a handsome boy with head full of hair. He eats well.

This little snip of information about our sweet boy means so much to me. These little details bring me closer to knowing him. I am so thankful for this glimpse into his personality. And, of course, I can't wait to see his toothy grin! A.

Special Treat

We got a special treat last week. We received a new picture of our sweet boy. He still has a wild hair-do, and we LOVE it!

We were uplifted by the site of his sweet face. It is still sad that he is growing older every day without us, but we have faith that he will be coming home to us. The sooner, the better!! A.

10 Months Old

Dear Sweet Boy, today you are 10 months old. A big day for a little boy. I hope someone hugs you today and that you feel the love we are sending you in our prayers.

I've been looking at your last picture and wondering how you have changed since then. How many teeth do you have? Are you crawling? How long is your hair? So many questions I don't have answers for. I just pray that you feel our love and that you are well taken care of... and that it won't be much longer until we can be together.
This is no doubt the hardest part of our journey. We love you Dear Sweet Boy...

3 Months

It's been just over 3 months since we received our referral for our sweet baby boy. Unfortunately, our travel to bring him home is still months away. Due to delays on both the US and Vietnam sides, we won't be able to bring him home before the end of the year. We had hoped to have him home before his first birthday in January. It now looks more likely that we will not travel until at least March. There is still a chance it could happen sooner, but it is a long shot.

We are trying to stay positive. It is still very hard knowing our baby boy is growing older everyday without us. We long to hold him in our arms and pray that our delays will be resolved soon. This has been one of the hardest parts of our wait.

I hope to have better news to share soon... A