Newell News

Hi All, We have a cute little girl in our hands now. She is absolutely adorable and you all will love her so much. She walked out with a little backpack on her back and clutching a the panda bear in her left hand that we had sent a month ago. She held the hands of another woman in the orphanage who brought her over. It turns out they had brought her back to the orphanage a week ago to prepare her. In her backpack, she had three little tiny little dolls, our camera and pictures of our family (including Tilly, the boys, etc.). It was heartbreaking and adorable. There have been no tears yet and she hugged Heidi and let me hold her. She fell asleep about 30 minutes after we hade her (in our arms). She is very reserved, quiet and I’m sure very scared so please say a prayer. I am attaching a few pictures and will send more soon. This is amazing, God is good. Love you all, Mike

Hi All, We gets lots of smiles now! Abby and her hold hands, wrestle, sing songs to the Chinese video we brought. I hid under the covers and they asked “where is Daddy”? She pointed at the bed and I popped out (she laughed, and laughed, and laughed). This is fun and going extremely well.

We have just talked to mom and dad on skype.We saw molly and she is so happy. She smiles a lot and she told a cab driver that my parents were really kind. We gave her a doll and she plays with it 24/7.

We finally received all of our travel documents today and our In Country Itinerary! It is such a relief! It feels like the very last thing that could hold us up from meeting our Molly on October 26th, God willing! There is a little bit of "Until we're on that plane..." but overall we're so thankful to be at this point and words simply can not express how much we can't wait to meet Miss Molly!

This has been an extremely exciting time. We had our travel meeting yesterday which was a conference call with our travel director and the 19 families that are going with us. 19 families! Some are adopting babies and many are adopting special needs and older children, all girls except for one boy ;-) We can't wait to meet everyone in Beijing. They all come from different parts of the United States and have completely different stories as to what brought them here. Many have blogs and I can't wait to read them, I'll add them to my blogs I follow. There was a glitch with getting our travel documents out this week, so please pray for our group that all the documents get delivered next Tuesday (some families are traveling Wednesday!). As each day passes we get more and more filled with wonder as we anticipate meeting Molly. What will she think of us? Will she know? Will she understand? Will she have been prepared? How will she grieve her foster family? What will she be l

At this point, 2 weeks from today, we will have met Molly. That may explain why I wake up at 5:30am every morning with excitement & butterflies:)! I have these thoughts/visions now. This morning, I imagined you ABBY walking down the streets of China holding Molly's hand. Amazing. I am absotulely blown away by how you kids are embracing this. The passion you have for bringing this little girl into our family is indescribable. I have never been more proud of you all then during this time. This is clearly God's calling for our family and you are faithful. I am so, so proud of each of you and love you very much. Dad

Many families who adopt have a blog to journal their adoption and many of us who are still on the road to ours get much needed advice, information and overall encouragement from them. If you have a chance to read the last blog "I have a home" from Adoption Road (check the blogs that I follow - scroll down on the left). It is beautifully written and something I know I'd love to share with Molly when she begins to formulate the same questions.

We are thrilled to have booked our flights. It does make it seem much more real all of a sudden. We will be flying out on Friday, October 23rd (Newark to Beijing), arriving Saturday afternoon (13 hour flight). From there we'll fly to Kunming where we meet Molly! Then on to Guangzhou for more paperwork and appointments, and leave on Friday, November 6 to come home! (15 hour flight on the way back :-) We pray that Molly will be prepared by her foster parents to meet us and that she'll have peace and comfort during the transition, that she isn't scared but has some understanding of what is happening in her little life.

Since our blog is brand new, I thought I'd give a brief update of the Molly story. We first began discussing adoption seriously in May of 2008. There was a lot to think about, foster parenting, domestic adoption, international. We became passionate with China after reading the story of the Steven Curtis Chapman family. They were definitely an inspiration to us. I was so excited I started immediately gathering information for China and found an agency and got as many papers together as I could. Then M came to me and said that he really felt we should switch agencies to America World Adoption. At first all I could think of was all the additional paperwork, but I quickly realized that his feelings were strong and most likely correct. We left our old agency on October 15, 2008 and started up with AWA on October 18th. By April, we had all our paperwork over to China (DTC) and had received notice that we were logged in (LID). A few days later, we received a referral of a little

We are counting down the days until we meet Molly...we're thinking that it will be Monday, October 26th, but we've yet to book our flights :-) We're still hoping to do that today, our agency let us know that the price of the flights is coming down this week! So, that is great news for us!! Psalm 100:1 & 5 Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness, come before Him with joyful songs. For the Lord is good and His love endures forever. His faithfulness continues through all generations.