It was the day before my birthday when I saw the phone call from our Philippines coordinator. Ever since we sent in our travel documents for approval in mid-December, I have been praying for the approval to happen by my birthday. This was a huge God moment. He is truly showing us that He has His hand in planning the growing of our family. Lawrence and Mercy are going to be our children. We found out on Monday that the NACC (National Authority for Child Care) has approved us to be matched with Lawrence and Mercy.
We are overjoyed and also terrified at the same time because we want to be the best parents we can for them and be knowledgable in how best to help them adjust here. We do have a few more training classes to complete and these classes have been really great about learning how to help children who have been through trauma and hard things in life and what parenting children from hard places looks like.
The most important prayer now as we complete this referral process is for God to give calm and comfort for the children through this next step as we will start video calls in May or June with the children on a weekly basis to help them become comfortable with us. We also are asking God to prepare our hearts for this new season in our lives as we prepare to be first time parents.
The hope is that we can bring them home in the fall sometime. It is all dependent on how long it takes to get immigration paperwork and visas. But oh how grateful we are and we feel so blessed to be able to double our family hopefully by the end of this year.
For now, we start work on a care package for the children and wait for our proposal to come in the mail so we can then write our acceptance letter. The children will be shown the care package we send and then told about us upon receiving the care package. We are praying that we can feel like home to them , home when they look at the photos of us for the first time, home when we have our first conversations on video calls, and home when we get to give them their first hugs in the Philippines.
We love you Lawrence and Mercy more than you know.
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