Hong Kong Day 1

We made it to Hong Kong last night about 9:00.  The flight was good, just really, really long.  We didn't actually get to the hotel, something to eat, etc. until about midnight.  Then, we slept til 3:00 AM and now we are all wide awake.

We went out for some sightseeing today!  We went to HK island and to the Ocean Park.  Here's some pictures from our day.

Love & miss you boys!!!  We will Skype again soon.  XOXOXO

Getting ready to board the plane

Getting ready to land 

Ocean Park

China Bound

It's hard to believe that we are so close!

Thank you to everyone who participated in Harli's Super Sweet Silent Auction - it was a great success!!!  In case you are wondering, I am removing all of the auction info so that our blog can just be for our girl!  Had I thought more about it before I would have made another blog for the auction - oh well...

We are so excited to meet our sweet little angel a week from today!

Thumbs up!

We received some unexpected new pictures of our little lady yesterday!!  Only a few weeks and we'll be able to hug and kiss this sweet little angel!!

Travel Approval

Wow is about all I have to say right now.  We received our Travel Approval on Monday and we have been racing around trying to put together a plan for our trip.  When you receive your travel approval you are asked to request five possible Consulate dates.  Before we did this we consulted some travel agents.  They both told us that our best bet is to leave the week of August 27th.  The cost of airfare goes way down this week since we'll return in September and because we are booking out just far enough. Our Consulate date has been confirmed as September 11th.  Our Gotcha day - the day we meet Harli for the first time is September 3rd........the three year anniversary of Troy's aneurysm and the one year anniversary of the day we applied to adopt from China.  Like Troy's Grandma said - how can people not believe in God?  How can they not believe he had a hand in ALL of this and has guided us through each step.

I know that I speak a lot about Troy's aneurysm.  It's not because we are living in the past or anything like that.  We are still just so completely blown away by God's grace and the miracles only He can perform.  It's so surreal how it all happened and that he came out of all the surgery and everything with no complications.  He is still here to be my best friend and Daddy for our children.  God deserves our praises for this miracle over and over and over!

We are still SEVERAL thousand short of being able to pay for this adoption, but we have faith that God will provide.  One way or another we are going to get to our little girl, God's little girl and we are going to love and care for her - just like we do all of her siblings.

Many people won't support us for one reason or another, mostly because 'no one needs six kids' and that was so hard to swallow at first.  I couldn't understand how people could profess themselves as Christians, or religious at all, and then not support someone willing to step out in faith to follow His call.  Lately I've realized that I've got to hand it over to God.  I cannot let my heart become bitter.  We will continue to follow His calls and we will choose to be His hands and feet.  We will serve the least of these, we will love our neighbors as we love ourselves.  We will pray for our friends and family, all of them - even the ones that don't support what we are doing.  It's not for us to judge them, God will judge their actions.  As for us, maybe we could have been better Christians - maybe we missed opportunities to serve others and support them in their time of need.  We are committed to doing our best to make it so that others don't feel the way we have felt during most of this process.

The bottom line is we are adopting TO PLEASE GOD and NO ONE ELSE.  For all the people who are doubting our judgement right now, we hope that when you meet Harli you see the sparkle of God in her eyes.  We hope that your hearts soften when you see her flourish with her forever family.  We pray that God moves you to recognize your blessings and step out to serve in some way.

This is what's on my heart and I had to get it out there.  It wasn't to offend or judge.  Just pure and honest, from my heart.  This process has made us much stronger and we have more faith in our God than ever.

We are nearing the end of this journey and we can use your help in a big way.  So, I'm praying that we do have some supporters still out there.  We are the family of the week - see previous post - for one more day.  We have our Both Hands project coming up - I'll post about that soon!

For the people who have supported us, we are so eternally grateful.  We couldn't have done this without each and every one of you.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.  Your generosity hasn't gone unnoticed!

Good read if you have a moment -

http://ethicsdaily.com/why-god-expects-you-to-care-for-the-least-of-these-cms-19058