Qian Beibei

We went to church this morning. I decided to sing in the choir this morning since I'd practiced the song with them. We did "All Good Gifts" from "Godspell". I love that show! The Lofte started with that show.

After church we made a couple stops--as usual-- to pick up some things. We drove home, planning to unload the wood, finish the laundry--have another normal day. UNTIL...we saw there was a message on the answering machine. We listened to the message from the China Program Director! She said she knew it was "off hours" and we probably weren't expecting a call but... they found another child--a girl, younger, with a cleft lip ONLY and it's already been repaired! Would we like to review another child? OF COURSE we would like to review another child! We left her a message (we figured she'd left her previous message as we were pulling into the garage). She called back and said we were very lucky! A second referral already!

She gave us the same basic information on this child -- her name (Qian Beibei), her birth date (December 16, 2007--2 days before Tony's birthday--which makes her just over 11 months old), her province (Guangdong) and the name of her orphanage. She mentioned again that the lip surgery was already done but that doesn't mean we wouldn't do a little more "fixing" later on. We said we'd definitely love to see her information.

About 45 minutes later we received the email. Tony came in from the shop and we looked at all the documents--same as last time. Beibei is very small and very cute. The information says she laughs aloud but the pictures haven't captured a smile yet. She looks pretty sober!

I called the doctor again and asked him if he could look at her labs and said we were OK with just the cleft lip this time. He responded later on that her labs looked good and the only "problem" he saw was the cleft lip.

I left soon after we forwarded the documents to the doctor to go to a bell choir concert at church. My mom was meeting me. We had decided that if this was a "yes" this time that we would try to find a way to tell all of our parents at the same time. So... I had to not let on to Mom that something was up! It wasn't too difficult. The concert was good and then Mom had to get to a store before it closed. I just stayed at church because my Bible Study class was meeting in a fairly short time and it didn't pay to drive all the way home and back again. I read and had brought a sandwich for supper.

While I was reading in our Bible Study room, Pastor Nancy came in and was amazed at how early I was! She asked how the adoption was coming. Hmmmm...... what to say without giving something away? "Well, every day is progress" is what I came up with. It sounded great! Another person asked also and I said the same thing. He liked that way to put it! So, that's what I'll say for now!

When I got home from Bible Study we got to work on our LOI for Qian Beibei! Holt had sent a sample which I had already typed into a document and left space for our child's name, condition and other information. We attached it to an email and both clicked "send" at the same time (!) at approximately 6:30 pm on November 23, 2008.

WE HAVE FOUND OUR DAUGHTER!