Merry Christmas

So since were are headed to China I guess it is time to start blogging about Patrick Shepherd Ayres’ adoption.  Better late than never I guess.  What? On a plane? On Dec 23?  I thought you weren’t going until January.  Yeah.  That’s what we thought too.  But as I have said once or twice, God had a different plan. 

So for those of you who are out of the loop, we are in the process of adopting our 4^th child in 2 years, and 3^rd boy born in 2011.  Zheng Yun Qi, soon to be Patrick Shepherd Ayres, is in Zhengzhou, Henan, China.  We were blessed to have met him when we spent two weeks caring for the babies of New Hope Foster Home in Beijing during August 2013.  At the time we were in the process of adopting John, and vowed not to fall in love with another baby.  Of course we fell in love with 50 but come on, another adoption.  7 kids is plenty isn’t it?  Apparently not. It didn’t take us long to fall in love with Qi Qi and despite leaving Beijing feeling sure we would never see him again, he was never far from our thoughts and prayers, especially for Janie.  Janie spent months writing about him in her school journal, praying for him, asking if we could adopt him, asking if she could just marry him!!! (On a side note, when teaching your kids about the power of prayer, understand that they can and will use that power in a mighty way.  Oh to have the simple faith of a child).  I was resistant despite the gentle nudging of the Holy Spirit, but the women in my life kept praying.  In my eyes there was one big problem.  Qi Qi has a VERY complex heart defect that I wasn’t ready to take on.  How would we stay in the hospital with him while he has a major heart operation while 7 other children stayed at home?  What if he didn’t live?  How could we put ourselves through that?   So I asked Lauren those specific questions.  Her answer, we are ready, and if he lives 2 weeks or 100 years at least it will be with a family.  How could I say no to that?  At that point the paper chase began.  We were matched to Qi Qi in September and prayed to have him by his birthday, Christmas Day.

Fast forward to December. Based on our previous adoptions, our paperwork was coming together for an early December trip to China.  Maybe even there and home before Christmas.  But it seems every step took extra days.  Extra days turned into extra weeks, and before we knew it early December was looking like mid January.  The last day to have a gotcha day in China this year would be December 22.  The Chinese authority decided to shut down Dec 27 to January 5.  We still had hope to fly out on Dec 19 to get our son just before the shutdown.  Unfortunately, we got closer and closer to that day and still weren’t issued our travel approval. We had to accept that Patrick would be spending his birthday in China and we would be in Alabama

So how is it that we are travelling to China on December the 23, a day after the deadline?  All I can say is God had a different plan.  On Saturday we were preparing for some more Christmas fun and my phone rang.  On the other end of the line was Joshua Zhong, the founder of CCAI, our adoption agency.  December 20 was Elisabeth’s gotcha day so we thought he must have been calling to see how she was doing.  He wasn’t.  He quickly started telling me a story that would turn our next few days into a whirlwind.  Apparently, Henan province is in line to have a record number of adoptions in 2014.  They were a few short of their number, and called Joshua to see if he knew of any families who could come quickly and adopt on or before December 26, one day before the shutdown.  He wanted to know if we were interested.  Of course we said yes.  We had four days to pack for a 2-3 week trip to China, rearrange our Christmas plans, book tickets, and arrange my work schedule.  Oh yeah, he also said that this wouldn’t be 100% sure until Sunday night or Monday morning.  I couldn’t book tickets until Monday.  So let the games begin.  Lauren started packing for herself, Janie, Maggie, and Patrick.  I started looking for flights and getting the office taken care of.  We received official word just after midnight Sunday.  I said 4 days didn’t I?  Well there was no flight plan available for Christmas Eve that would allow us to arrive on time to Zhengzhou, so here we are.  Three days after the initial phone call, and 1 day after booking tickets I’m waiting to board a plane to Korea then connect to Zhengzhou.  We managed to fit in a little Christmas fun with the kids before leaving today. 

God had (and always has) a different and better plan.  If we would have received travel approval the week we anticipated we would have booked flights for January.  If those small delays wouldn’t have happened we would not have seen God throw the mountain that was blocking our way into the sea.  All along we were frustrated because things weren’t moving at least from our perspective.  All the while God was putting all the pieces in to place. 

Didn’t I mention the prayers of a child before? Janie’s prayer and the top request on her Christmas list was to have Patrick before Christmas Day.  Because we couldn’t fly out on Christmas Eve, we will land in Zhengzhou at 11 am on Christmas Day, quickly stop by our hotel, then go to the registration office to receive Patrick.  We will be without real sleep for 48 hours, without a shower for the same, surviving on snacks and airplane food, but I can’t think of anywhere I would rather be.  Merry Christmas to us, Ayres party of 10!!