Lukas' home for now...

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Our Surprise Referral!!!


On February 6, 2008, at 8:50 am, I received a phone call from our case worker. She asked me if I was sitting down 'cause she wanted to talk to me about something. Started off by saying that she knew that we were considering the special needs program and weren't prepared financially to do anything until later in the year, but that they received an unexpected list and there was a little boy that she wanted to tell me about. "He's a year old, he has albinism and he has red hair!!" Then she went on to say, I know Mari's birthday is in December (she didn't know the exact date) and said that we would have another birthday to celebrate in December if we decided to accept this referral. Imagine our shock when he had the SAME birthdate our daughter!!! An Dong Lin was born on December 23, 2006 and currently residing in Xi'an Children's Welfare Association in Sha'anxi in the Peoples' Republic of China.

I called my husband and told him the situation and he said, "Go for it!!" So I called our caseworker back and she sent emailed the file about 10 minutes later.
The first picture of him was his visa photo that was taken with a red background and boy did his hair look red!!! As I scrolled down through the paperwork, I found two additional photos of him. What a cutie!!! He has blond hair and blue eyes and is said to be quite healthy! In this photo, he is only 9-1/2 months old and it stated that at his 10 month check up he weighed 21.5 pounds, 30" tall. Quite the bruiser!!!

All the same, we were head over heels about him! And big sister Mariella was so thrilled to be a big sister finally!!!

So in a span of about 40 minutes, I called the pediatrician and asked if I could run his file over, we arranged to me with our caseworker at 1 pm to go over any other questions, gathered up Mari, who was home sick with that terrible influenza, wait for daddy to come home and then off to meet with our CW. My head was swimming and all I could think was that we have a son and somehow God will provide us a way to make our way to China and bring him home. This truly was and continues to be a leap of faith. I'll post more photos and info as we know it.

No comments: