Our Story | Julan’s Home Page | Titanium

Travel Update!

Sat, 29 May 2004 07:05:24 -0400

We just received estimated travel plans. We'll be leaving June 18th and returning July 1st with our little girl!!!. Julan is from the WuChuan Social Welfare Institute, so we'll be staying in Guangzhou, near Hong Kong, the whole trip, about 2 weeks.

Referral UPDATE...

Tue, 18 May 2004 07:04:25 -0400

MAY 2004 – Julan's referral FINALLY came in!!! Rumors started flying April 29th that all the September referrals had been mailed from China, before they took a week off for their labor holiday. Friday was a rough day, hoping the phone call would come before the weekend. By the end of the day it was clear from web chatter that we would have to wait until Monday to hear any official news. Talk about a LONG weekend.

We knew our agency started making phone calls at around 11:30am our time, so we hung out by the phone all morning... noon... afternoon... Of course the phone call finally came to the cell phone in the midst of picking up kids from school! Luckily we quickly found a parking spot, took down all the info we could think of asking for and then remembered to breathe.

Waiting for the overnight package on Tuesday turned into another ordeal. 10:30, no package... 11:30, no package... 12:30... 1:30... 2:00... We finally went on the carriers website to track the package – it said "delivered at 2:00" A thorough search of every possible location around our home showed no package. A thought occurred to Jolene that a home with the same number as ours on a street with a similar name around the corner sometimes gets our mail by mistake. A quick drive around the block revealed a little white box on their doorstep with our name on it!

The toughest part so far was the wait from Monday to Mother's day (May 9). We decided to keep news of Julan a secret until the big reveal at church on Mother's Day. Even our boys had to keep it quiet! But there wasn't a dry eye in the place when the video played!

Welcome to the Family Video!

To see how things have been going since we've been home CLICK HERE.

March Update

Thu, 18 Mar 2004 07:05:49 -0500

March 2004 – We are currently in a holding pattern. With referrals coming in recently, we are hoping to be matched in May and traveling in June to China. Her room is done (quite an adventure moving the two younger boys in together!) and we have our child carrier and car seat! Now we just need Julan!

Our China Adoption Story

Thu, 19 Feb 2004 07:01:42 -0500

Really, our story to adopt began about eight years ago. Jolene saw a program about the availability of girls in China. At that time we did not qualify because we were too young and already had children.

After a few years passed by, the rules changed in China regarding families with children and we met the age limit

Sometime in '98-'99, we investigated CCAI (Chinese Children Adoption International.) We appreciated their response to us and held onto the video and application.

In the fall of 2002, Jim decided it was time to begin the process. We sent off our application to CCAI the day before Thanksgiving 2002.

We received the acceptance call the following Monday. The paperchase began.

We won't go into the whole paperchase thing only because so many others have done a much better job than we could. Suffice it to say that all went very smoothly. Jolene had some

doubts that we would be able to figure out all that would be required. She spent a few moments in tears, feeling it was all just too overwhelming. Eventually we just broke it down into smaller segments (Jolene is the queen of lists) and we were able to check each item slowly off the list.

Once the paperchase was over it was time to FedEx the dossier to CCAI, our adoption agency, we found ourselves standing at the FedEx counter feeling very nervous to let the dossier out of our hands. We prayed over the packet and let it go. Once we were back in the car, we both just wept as we prayed for God to travel with it. We realized it had been nine months since we had started the journey. Jolene said she felt like she had just given birth.

Our Dossier to China (DTC) date is 9/3/03. That means we were logged in by the Chinese government agency, the CCAA, in September and the countdown began. With the timeline speeding up, we are looking at being matched around June 2004, with travel being sometime in July 2004.

Which brings us to the present. Our match day will be about nine months from our DTC date, which means we are paper pregnant right now. Jolene is acting like an expectant mother, which we understand to be perfectly normal. : )

This adventure, that we believe we were called to by God, has so tested our faith and grown us spiritually. We pray for our little Julan Abigail, and know that God is knitting her together perfectly for us.
Our three boys are very excited about being big brothers. Javin is especially, since it will be a new experience for him.

About Our Growing Family

Wed, 18 Feb 2004 07:01:29 -0500

Husband: Jim

Wife: Jolene

Sons: Saben 18, Talon 15, Javin 12

Daughter: Julan Abigail 3 (adopted from China 07/04)

In the year 2004, we made it through the lengthy process of adopting our daughter from China.

Why?

First off, it must not be in our genes to have a biological daughter. Jim's dad, John, is one of three sons, Jim is one of three sons, and we had three sons. We really relate to the story of Noah and his three sons. To make matters worse, Jolene is the only daughter from a family with five older brothers.