THE BIG DAY !!!

Well, where do we start. Isn't she beautiful !!! This must be what God meant in James 1:17 Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father (Eston just picked that out of one of his books and read that too us a few minutes ago). I guess we’ll mostly let the pictures do the talking. The first picture on the right was taken after we got back to our hotel room. She was already enjoying fun interaction with her forever mommy. The other pics below are pretty self explanatory. They begin with a few that were taken when we first met her. After taking her from the government office, we went back to our hotel room for a little while. Later, we went to lunch with our agency representative, Ashley. LiLi is a whiz with chop sticks (or a fork) and loves rice and vegetables of course. After lunch, and after Ashley left, we mostly stayed in our room but occasionally went out to walk around, or play in one of the childrens play areas in the hotel. She loves the sticker book.

There’s so much to say. For those of you wondering, the Chinese woman is not her foster mom...she's an orphanage representative.

We know that LiLi did receive the gift we sent and had it all with her in her purse when we met. It seems that she had wonderful foster parents who loved her very much. She is very smart and obviously spent a lot of time with her foster mamaa’. For that, we are so very thankful. However, because she loves her family so much, her grieving will be difficult for her. She is doing great as you can see from the pictures, but she is grieving deeply because she is being taken away from everything that she has known. Right now, she wants to go back home to her family. Many times during the day, she would put her flip flops on, go and get mine for me to put on and then gather all of her things together in her purse. She would then say mamaa’ (and then speak something very clearly in mandarine). Walking me to the door I knew she wanted to take me outside. She would push the elevator button herself; once down in the lobby, she would lead me outside and while pointing at the buses would talk to me in mandarine. (She was asking me to take her home). On the other hand, it’s obvious she knows we are her parents. She wants to go back to what’s familiar to her but she also has a peace and a calmness about her spirit. It’s obvious that her foster family has prepared her for this day. She’s been calling us babaa’ and mamaa’ since the moment she met us. The little family picture album that we sent her is worn out and it’s obvious that she has been looking at it a lot. Even the t-shirt we sent her with our pictures on it is faded and worn. We are happy that she is grieving…we know that it’s healthy for her. We’ve prayed from the beginning that her grieving would be immediate and healthy. Even so, it is difficult for Mike and I because we know she’s hurting. We believe that her foster mom is probably the one hurting the most.