"So through the eyes love attains the heart: for the eyes are the scouts of the heart." Borneilh

WAITING…
It has now been about two weeks since we thought we would receive our T.A. (travel approval).   Barker (our agency) tells us they would still expect us to travel around May 13, so we continue to prepare for that.  Today I completed what should be the remainder of the paperwork until we get to China.  In the meantime, I read all I can to prepare to bring Zoe home.  And I feel like I obsess over every tidbit of info I find out.


Most recently I found the real reason Zoe was removed from her foster home last fall.   Apparently there was more to the story than the burning of coal in the homes.  At the end of October 2009 due to special restriction from the provincial civil affairs office there was a change that no longer allowed for no foster care in Inner Mongolia.  Foster care was discontinued due to two separate instances of orphanage children dying in foster care house fires caused by unsafe heating and cooking stoves.   Baotou SWI (where Zoe now lives), was overwhelmed with the influx of over 50 children in one day.


We also continue to receive information about Zoe’s care.   She first went to her foster Grandma (He Gui Xiang) and Grandpa (Tian Sheng Yu) on May 7, 2008.  She was the only foster baby for this family.   The foster grandparents also had a daughter and a grandson who lived in the same home.  They are Moslem (Muslim).  The word for a Chinese Moslem is Hui.


Now in the orphanage she sleeps in a crib in a room with 11 other children and she does not talk much.   She only says few words yet we must know a little mandarin since she is almost 2-1/2 and this is the language she knows.   We are bringing home a little girl who is old enough to walk out of her world of familiarity and into her new life.  To a child with her background it is like moving into Disney World.  Coming from an orphanage to a home with toys and a refrigerator full of food and drinks. We are preparing for the trauma of this change for an older child.  She has lost the only parents she knew in the past 8 months and now she will lose what has become familiar to her over the past several months.  

Although she will say good-by to yesterday, she will hold it in her heart forever.   And as God wipes away her tears, we are blessed that he will use our human hands.


ALL GLORY TO GOD, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely MORE than we might ask or think.
                                    -Ephesians 3:20