4.5 hrs till we head out

I should be sleeping...

But if you know me, you know I am NOT.

I made sure everyone else was packed, but me. Isn't that what moms do?

After some last minute luggage changes, in order to fit medical equipment we are transporting to foster care facilities. We are finally packed... mostly. Grab a couple items in am.

I can't really explain the emotional roller coaster my stomach is on. A good friend asked me if I am excited. Yes, but that does NOT sum it up. I am a bundle of nerves. I have NEVER left my kids or dogs this long EVER. So there is the worry and stress a mom has over that. There is the "Do I have EVERYTHING?" stress. The anxiety of thinking about being in a plane high in the sky for 15 hrs. Of course we are excited to meet the boys finally. But also, "Will they like us?" worry. The I can't believe we are REALLY doing this emotion. And on and on and on...

I really can't wait to get there and get home. That is the bottom line!

But also, I KNOW God is going to take care of us and the boys and that He called us to this and He will bring us thru it. So really, there is no need to worry. You know, I am not actually worried, it must be excitement then... :)

So yes, I am EXCITED!!!!!!

I can't wait to hug both my boys.

I wonder what they are thinking???

Steve, Zoe & Levi are very excited too.

We all, including Cory & Drew went out to a movie for the last time as a family of 6. The kids had wanted to see Wreck It Ralph and they figured it wouldn't still be in theaters when we get back. We hadn't been to the movies in several months. Saving all our pennies. But we decided we needed one last family thing. So we went.

And God of course blessed us, yet again. He never ceases to amaze me. During the movie I get a text message from a friend who asks where I am and says they're headed to see me. So I tell them in theater 2 watching movie. So a little while later, they show up and hand me a $200 check. God apparently led them to do this. Wow! Praise the Lord, who honors our stewardship and putting our family first. I am not perfect, but it sure does feel good when it appears you are on the right path God wants you on and He blesses in ways on HE can. :)

And well the movie was a nice story too, with a good ending and the moral of grow where you are planted bascially. And by that I mean, embrace who God made YOU and see what plans and purposes He has for you as you... not as what you think the Hero should look like. Never know where you might end up...

For us, it appears China... this time. :)

Ok, so many people have asked for our schedule, to be able to pray specifically. Please remember China is currently 14 hr ahead / time difference from CST 

Family Patton schedule 

Thurs Nov.15th

Leave Home 5:30AM, Arrive DFW 7:30AM, Depart 10:30AM to go to China!

Fri-Sun Nov.16^th-18^th  

Arrive Beijing 8:15pm. Deliver supplies to foster care facilities.

Sun Nov.18^th

Depart Beijing at noon. Arrive Zhengzhou at 13:40

Mon Nov.19^th

Gotcha Day! Meet Kai Joseph in Civil Affairs. Sign agreement.

Tues Nov.20^th

Adoption registration, notary. Zhengzhou-Luoyang by tour van. Around 2.5 hours.
Apply passport in Luoyang. And back to Zhengzhou in late afternoon.
Steve & Sherry 23^rd Wedding Anniversary

Wed Nov.21^st

Free in Zhengzhou for one day.

Thurs Nov.22^nd

Pick up notaries for Kai Joseph. And check paper.
Zhengzhou-Xi’an by High Speed Rail (Bullet Train).
Gotcha Day! Meet child Eli in late afternoon. Sign agreement.
Thanksgiving!

Fri Nov.23^rd

Adoption registration, notary and apply passport.

Sat-Tues Nov.24^th-27^th

Free in Xi’an.

Wed Nov.28^th

Pick up notaries. (get passport for Kai Joseph)

Thurs Nov.29th

Pick up passport for Eli in the afternoon.
Xi’an-Guangzhou by flight

Fri Nov.30^th

Medical and skin test for both boys.

Sat-Sun Dec.1^st - 2^nd

Free in Guangzhou.

Mon Dec.3^rd

Get medical result.

Tues Dec.4^th

Visa appointment at 10:00. Swear.

Wed Dec.5^th

Get boys’ visas in the afternoon.
Take train to Hong Kong.

Thurs Dec.6th

Depart Hong Kong 12:55 AM to go HOME!
Arrive DFW @ 8:20AM Welcome Home Kai & Eli!

We covet all your prayers.

We will be trying to update with info & pics while there. Keep checking back.
I am going to now TRY to get a little sleep. Power nap maybe.

God bless everyone tenfold!
I AM GOING TO CHINA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

hehe,
Sherry

 

Two sleeps to two boys

I am pausing from packing to breathe a minute and thought I would post today's blog count down.

Only TWO more sleeps until we leave to bring home our TWO blessings.

It has been a year since we began this adoption adventure and I am amazed at what God has done.
Nov 6, 2011 I blogged about a Chinese Legend of how Koi fish become dragons.
http://adventure4eli.blogspot.com/2011/11/chinese-legend-how-koi-becomes-dragon.html

I used this pic

At that time we were only planning to adopt Eli. But notice the pic has TWO fish...

Yep, God knew all along we were adopting two boys...

two Koi that will become dragons just like the legend.

They have both already persevered so much! Just to be 11 & 13 yr old special needs orphan boys alive in China, means they are strong.

Eli almost died as an infant. He was born 2 months premature and I was told he was very weak and dying when he went to live with his foster family. But 10 yrs later tho developing very slowly, he is now a smart and healthy boy ready for the next chapter in his life.

Kai was abandoned at 6 years old outside the orphanage gates with major heart defects and a hernia. He had surgery within a month, and another within a year. That was six years ago, and though his heart still needs repaired he is now 13 yrs old and can ride a bike and is ready for his new life too.

God has a BIG plan for BOTH their lives. I am so humbled and blessed to be called their mom. I can not wait to see what God has in store for them and us.

And though it has been a LONG year getting here, it is still kinda sureal to me that in two days I will be on a plane flying to China to meet my two special boys that God has blessed me with.

And we are making progress to get there even... lol

We have finzalized travel arrangements with our agency and travel coordinator.
We have gone to the bank and wired the money & taken out the cash we need for travel.

Packing is STILL going on...

But when there are four people traveling, to four different cities, for the purpose of bringing home two more; and because the weather is so different in the two different areas of the country, packing is twice as hard; and you add gifts, supplies for orphanges to carry over, and stuff to keep four kids entertained for 3 weeks. Yes, 3 WEEKS! So it's a lot of strategic packing. lol

I will close this post with the following scripture, which is perfect for where we are in our adventure right now, and just so happens to be one of my favorite scriptures from my adolecenst days of being blessed to attend a christian school for two years.

Psalm 100

A psalm for giving thanks.

 

1Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.

2Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.

3Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

4Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.

5For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.

 

I have a lot to thank & praise God for today!

 

Today my husband and I celebrate 25 yrs since we met, and I love him more today than ever and am so grateful God joined us together. I would have never imagined all the blessings I have had in the last 25 years. But I sure wouldn't give any of it up. Thank you Jesus! 

And we will be in China for this Thanksgiving, but what better way to celebrate all God has done for us over the last year, than to finally hold the two boys He has called to join our family.

Kai's Gotcha Day is Mon Nov 19th
Kai's Adoption Day is Tues Nov 20th, which is also Steve & mine 23rd wedding anniversary
Eli's Gotcha Day is Thurs Nov 22nd, which is also Thanksgiving
Eli's Adotpion Day is Fri Nov 23rd

The only thing that would make it better is if our two oldest boys, cory & Drew, could be with us that week. But sadly they can not travel to China with us, because they're holding down the fort at home and working. But other than that, I can not think of a better anniversary or Thanksgiving!

So my heart is singing with thanksgiving and praise, to God my Father in heaven who has blessed me even tho I don't deserve it. Because He is good, His loves does endure forever and His faithfulness is never ending.

Well, maybe I didn't close this post as soon as I planned. But I can't help but praise God and thank Him for all He has done...

and that again includes all of you who pray and support us and our boys to come home.

God bless you,
Sherry

still counting down

today was 3 days until we leave

of course now we are only 3 sleeps, not days...

but our days are getting fewer and we still have lots to do.

However, our paperwork is now DONE & ready to go. Yay!!!

And the boys' rooms are ready now too. Woohoo!

Eli's space

He and Levi will be sharing a room

Levi can't wait to share a room with Eli

Kai has a teen guys room

His favorite color is orange!
Pics of his friends from Shepherd's Field all around

His sister Zoe designed & pained his desk.
US map for pin'ing where all his friends are. 

 Tomorrow we will tackle more packing.

only THREE sleeps.

Good night all,
Sherry



4 sleeps untill...

the four of us leave for China!

 

Church this morning was weird, and good.

 

I LOVE praise & worship, but this morning the drummer was absent due to a Royal Rangers event. So at first it was slow and hard for me to get into worship. But then I realized I am free to worship here in the USA, and may not be able to worship for at least 3 weeks while we are in China.

 

That got me praising God.

 

Then I began to worship God.

 

Which brought to my mind ALL that God has done in a year to bring us to be 4 days until we fly across the world to meet our TWO sons and bring them home to join their forever family...

 

our Patton family-

 

 

Then I started bawling... lol

 

Ok, so sometimes I can be a bit emotional. But how can I NOT? God has done some pretty amazing things in one year to bring us to this point. He has moved mountains of paperwork, social workers' hearts, government officials, brought mega funds, prepared our hearts, and oh so much more.

 

When we began this process a year ago, we felt led to refer to it an ADVENTURE. Because an adventure is defined as an exciting or unusual experience; it may also be a bold, usually risky undertaking, with an uncertain outcome.

 

Well we have definitely been on an "adventure", but it has only been the beginning. We are about to embark on the most amazing physical adventure of our lives. Our family of 6 will now be a family of 8. We already are in our hearts, but in the real world is a different story.

Our two new sons across the globe are about to embark on their own adventure. Tho we are a part of it, we are not going thru it the same way they are. Their part will be the scariest thing ever... To leave all they have ever known, to trust strangers to take them to a far away land and live forever... with strange language, food, smells, etc.

 

Wow!

 

 

Please, please pray for Kai & Eli!

 

 

My heart is so heavy for them today.

 

Now, I am off to pack...

 

Trying to keep you all informed. Maybe tomorrow I will post our travel itinerary. So that way everyone can be praying specificly on each leg of our adventure.  :)

 

Thank you all!

 

Sincerely,

Sherry

5 days and counting....

Busy...
Busy...
Dreadfully Busy...
Shockingly busy...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhQSebbSKYY

I will post more info about our trip soon tho.

I promise!

Keep praying for these two that are about to have their world shaken.

Thanks, we love and appreciate your all!
Sherry

6 days...

until we board a plane headed to China!!!

That's right...

TRAVEL APPROVAL

We were on Day 16 of waiting and hoping, praying it would come. Then I got the call yesterday at 3:12pm CST that both our TAs had arrived at our adoption agency.

Woohoo!!!

I had to go outside to scream, as I was at the DMV waiting for my 18 yr old to take his driving test.

So then the next big prayer was CA.

For those of you wondering that is your Consulate Appointment to get your child's Visa to enter the US. It is the last step in China before you can bring your child home. In our case CHILDREN.

And if we were going to get to China by Thanksgiving, as hoped, we needed CA for first week in Dec... and we needed to find out fast, because we had to get plane tickets Monday is a US holiday... Veterans Day (thank you to all our vets... Steve is one)  But that meant the US Consulate in Guangzhou, China will be closed Monday. So our wonderful China coordinator worked into the night to get our CA and at 12:40am CST I got the email that we indeed have CAs for 10am Tues Dec 4th.
Hallelujah! Praise the Lord who works ALL miracles.

Next was plane tickets... our awesome travel agent was standing by and found us super flights. And we leave in 6 days from DFW at 10:30am Thur Nov 15th. We are so excited!!!

Sorry for the not-immediate post, but our heads have absolutely been spinning trying to get everything arranged since it happened.

And anyone wanting to welcome Kai & Eli home, are invited to show up at the airport. more info to come as we get details from the travel agent. :)

THANK YOU ALL so very very much for all the prayers, support and help to bring our boys home. I know many of you have really prayed and some for Kai Joseph for years. Those prayers were NOT in vain, they were answered and we will be in China in 6 days and he will be HOME in less than 4 weeks.

We do have the funds to get us to China. Praise God for HIS provision.

We do still have LOTS of 2013 Adoption Success Stories wall calendars available for sale. They (all 200 of them) arrived yesterday. We would love to mail them all out before we leave.

Order yours today and think gifts too: Only $12 each, plus s/h ($3.50 1st, $1.50 ea add) http://adventure4eli.chipin.com/adoption-calendar

We will be in China for 3 weeks, and hubby only has 30 hours of paid leave. So December's monthly budget is going to be very tight. We paid upfront for the calendars. So hopefully they will all sell.

Thanks again & God bless all our prayer warriors and supporters tenfold!

We are going to CHINA!!!!!

Head spinning and so elated,
Sherry & family

WOW!

I did not know what else to call this post.

And I am sorry if you are a follower of our blog and have been waiting and waiting for an update. I had hoped to post "TA" and was waiting, but sadly it did not come today either.

My emotions are all over the place. Today is Day 13 of our TA wait. And we so expected it to come last week, especially after receiving a travel schedule and invoice from our agency.

But then last week was also a stressful week, as I was fundraising EVERY SINGLE DAY.

If you follow our blog, then you know we found out Fri Oct 26th that we were not receiving a Show Hope grant as we had hoped and thought we might.

And as of that same day, we were looking at possibly being very short of funds and trying to figrue out how we were going to bring our boys home.

If you read the blog posts last week, you know I was a basket case that first day.

But you also must have seen that God is FAITHFUL!

And it is HIM I wish to glorify in this post...

Because you see, in just ONE week God brought combined resources of:
fundraising,
donations,
promised donations,
lower adoption & travel costs,
and an interest free adoption loan...
totaling $14,500!

WOW!

Now you see why the reason for the blog title.

God is AMAZING!

If all resources promised and expected arrives on time...
pending CA dates, airline tickets and hotel reservations...
we "should" have enough money to make it to China and bring our boys home!!!

Hallelujah!

Thank you to ALL our prayer warriors. We know we could not have raised this money alone. We know that this is nothing short of a miracle. We know that your prayers were instrumental in this miracle. We know that God did this. We know that God planned it to show His LOVE & awesomeness. :)

So to ALL that gave... THANK YOU!

To ALL that prayed... THANK YOU!!

May God bless you ALL tenfold!

Now, we still have a few fundraisers to finish. But then we will probably need a few extra $$$ in country to buy the boys clothes and misc.

The 2013 Adoption Success Stories Calendars have been printed and shipped.

They are due to arrive Thurs. These are beautiful! They feature some fantastic adoptive families. Many well known advocates in the adoption community. So what better way to celebrate November as National Adoption month and advocate for adoption by ordering yours today. And Christmas is coming, what great gifts they'd make too. Each Calendar is only $12, plus s/h ($3.50 1st, $1.50 ea add)  http://adventure4eli.chipin.com/adoption-calendar or use ChipIn button on right of blog.

The other part of my emotional roller coaster is that Sun Nov 4th marked one year since we first saw Eli's advocate video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeGa-SAgpqA

I just can NOT wait to hug my boy!

But at the same time my heart is so heavy for the HUGE transition he is about to go thru. He has been in the same foster family since he was an infant... for almost his entire life. Levi is the same age as Eli and I keep thinking about loosing him, what that would be like for me? Then what life would be like for him to have to leave us and go with strangers to a foreign country with strange smells, food and langauge. I KNOW this is God's plan, but I also know not every plan is easy. It will be for ALL our good in the end, but I can't imagine the middle just yet.

Which makes me want to hug him all the more.

And to add to the emotions and stress, I am worried about Kai... This weekend Shepherd's Field Children's Village, where Kai lives, got their first snow! Yes, S.N.O.W.

And unfortunately the heat doesn't get turned on until Nov 15th.

Side Note: If you need any other reason to get out tomorrow and VOTE, there's one: To keep your freedoms; including freedom from Govt, either communist or socialist, controling your family's heat...

And when you vote tomorrow, please say a prayer for Kai to stay warm and healthy until we can bring him home in a few short weeks.

When I first heard the news, I started crying. Then when I explained to hubby why I was crying he asked me one question: can you do anything to change the situation?

First my mind began whirling around to see how I could possibly get blankets and jackets to him ASAP... yeah, right Sherry!

Sadly, the real answer was "No!"

Which led to my wonderful husband's next response, "Except PRAY"...

So we are praying for ALL the children & staff to be warmed supernaturally until the heat comes on.

The update is our travel schedule shows two sets of dates either us landing in province on Nov 18th or Nov 25th. Just waiting for TA (travel approval)... our LAST step in the adoption process, to be able to schedule our CA (Consulate appointment) at US Embassy in Guangzhou, China... our LAST step in China before being able to bring the boys home.

So that's the update for today. Hopefully tomorrow will bring more good news. :)

Praising Jesus,
Sherry