That wonderful, amazing, beautiful day.....

 The day that we have been waiting 892 days for finally happened!!! We have seen our baby's face! I still can't even believe this is real.  There is so much prayer and faith involved in this process, that it feels so surreal when it actually happens after you have waited so long.  I'm writing this several days after it happened, because the weekend was a whirlwind but I don't want to lose the freshness of the moment. Things went down a lot differently than we imagined, but this whole process has been different than we imagined, including the end result!
      So, last Wednesday afternoon I was checking Facebook, and on our agency's page someone had posted about a beautiful little girl who needed a family.  There's a backstory here- in the adoption world, there are what's called "waiting children", which basically means that they are on a list, waiting for a family to pick them.  Normally it is because they are older or have some sort of special need, or there aren't families working with the agency that match their parameters. There are websites where you can view these children and we had been doing that for months now.  Our hearts were broken that there were children who needed families that were waiting, and we too were sitting on a list waiting for our baby for so long.  Over this 2.5 year process we have several things that we believe God had put on our heart.  So, in looking at these waiting children, none of them really matched that, and after the last door was shut on our latest inquiry a few weeks ago, we decided to stop looking.  We would finish the process the way we started.  And then last Wednesday happened.  So I clicked over to the website(technically breaking our rule!) to look at the little girl mentioned, and she was beautiful.  And directly below her I saw another little girl, who seemed to match our parameters.  I clicked on her profile and found out more about her, and found out that she did in fact match our parameters.  So I told Aaron about her, and he whole heartedly agreed we needed to get more information. So I quickly emailed the agency and got her file sent to us.  Mind you, all of this happened about 1 hour before our small group was meeting, and they just happened to be coming to our house that night, so we were a bit frazzled.  We talked with the agency that night, and they advised that if we still felt so strongly about her in the morning after praying through the night that we should send in the application.  So we asked our friends for prayer and wisdom.  I anxiously sat through small group while Aaron led, waiting so that we could talk more about this little girl. We talked and prayed into the night and we both felt that we should keep moving forward until God shut the door if she wasn't meant to be ours.
      The next morning we both got up super early and spent some time in the Word together, praying and seeking God's face and we still felt confident to move forward.  So we filled out the application and emailed it over to the agency.  About 2 hours later I got a phone call that said our application looked great and they were putting her on hold for us until we said yes or no!! Basically meaning they wouldn't give her info to anyone else until we gave them an official answer. I couldn't believe it- this was really happening! We were both in shock.  So I frantically made all the phone calls I needed to make to the doctors, social workers, etc. We had her information reviewed, even though we knew we would say yes either way, and then we called the agency that evening to give them our official yes!!!!!!! And they said, "ok, she's yours!" So, we have a DAUGHTER!!!!!! A beautiful, precious, amazing, 17 month old gift from God.  Seriously, I can't wait to show you her picture, she is adorable!  And it was so amazing to get her referral the weekend of Easter.  I had been praying all week that we would have some sort of news this week.  I mean, how amazing would it be to see our baby's face the week leading up to our holiday celebrating our redemption? And we did, and it was beautiful, and I am still walking around in disbelief that we have a daughter on the other side of the world, and she has no idea that her little world was just changed forever. But it has sweet baby girl, it has!  We are praising God for his goodness and faithfulness. He is just so, so good! And we are humbled that he chose us to be her parents.  And that's our referral story :) Nothing like we imagined, but so special! I will update tomorrow on what this means for the rest of the process.  We can't post her picture online until she's home, but if you see us in person we will gladly show her off! I truly believe this is where we are now, that I posted in my last post: "I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord, be strong and let your heart take courage, wait for the Lord" Psalm 27:13-14
He is good!

Baby girl,
We love you so much! We have been waiting so long to know who you are, and now we know and we cannot wait to have you in our arms! We pray this next part of the journey will be short and we can get you home soon.  Everyone is so excited to meet you! God has written such a beautiful story for you and his hand is so evident in your life already. We are honored to be a part of it.  
Love,
Mommy and Daddy