Words cannot explain how excited we are to tell you this exciting news: WE HAVE BEEN MATCHED WITH OUR DAUGHTER!
We are officially on the way to bring home our 11 month old baby girl, Lyla!
Here is the story of the first time we saw her face, the fervent prayers we have been praying, and the amazing confirmation The Lord has given us.
On March 24, 2017, Todd and I received an email with 4 children in need of homes (these children were unable to be matched with any of the families with approved home studies, so our agency sent them out to all of the in process families.) Our sweet girl was the first picture on the list. Her picture was accompanied by a short paragraph of her birth history and developmental progress. Todd came home that day and immediately said "did you see the first little girl?!" Honestly, I skipped over her picture, because I read her paragraph first and she has some sad things in her birth history that filled me with fear. Todd was very gracious and seemed understanding of these fears. The next day, I was spending time in the word and very clearly heard God tell me that my spirit of fear is never from Him. He gives us a spirit of power and love, but never one of fear. [1 Timothy 1:7] He told me that we should request Lyla's information. After going back to my email and looking at her picture, my heart completely melted and I told Todd of what God had been saying to me. That day we requested her information. At this time, we were also finishing up our psychological evaluation updates for our homestudy. Busy, exciting time in our house!
Todd and I read over the medical information they sent over, but the last report was from February (when she was 6 months old). Unfortunately, the Korean pediatrician quit in March and they were without a doctor for 6 weeks, so it took until the last week of April to get updated medical information on Lyla. During this month of waiting, we prayed continuously for peace and unity on our decision to pursue Lyla or not. We also prayed that God would make it very clear to us. When we received the updated medical information on April 28th, God was so gracious to have given Lyla a great well baby visit, showing that she is right on track developmentally, and He gave us an indescribable peace to happily say YES to her!!
After speaking to our pediatrician and praying over our family and our sweet new daughter, we let our adoption agency know, on May 2nd (Madilynn's 2nd birthday), that we would be ecstatic to move forward with our adoption of Lyla. They called us on May 9th and told us the amazing news that we were matched pending homestudy with our girl!!! I immediately called Todd and with the biggest smile on my face, told him of our newest daughter!! We were a blubbering mess the whole day and were simply in awe of God's goodness and provision.
Then came the fun part of letting our family and friends know! The love for our baby girl is overwhelming and I know a huge community that cannot wait until she is safe in our arms!
Then on May 22nd, we got the big news that our homestudy was completed and approved, which meant that we are OFFICIALLY MATCHED! So we filled out our acceptance paperwork and wrote the largest check we may ever write, and sent it off to our agency. The next day we submitted our immigration paperwork to the US Government (which should take about 6 weeks to receive back.) Once we receive the immigration paperwork back, we can send our dossier to Korea and really get the ball rolling to get our girl home!
*We cannot share our sweet Lyla's picture until we take custody, but if you see me in person, please ask to see a picture, as I am carrying around a stack of pictures of our girl and love showing them off!!
