She is ours!

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." - Jeremiah 29:11

Wow.  What a couple of hours this morning.  A wide range of emotions.

Last night was great!  Lyla slept well (about 10 hours) and we had to wake her up this morning (in hindsight probably not a good idea). We bought a web cam at the store yesterday, so we got to do a video chat with the kids and everyone else back in Charlotte before going down for breakfast.  Let us know if you have a Skype account, and you could see your new little Wuerslin (hint, hint grandparents and family).  Another awesome buffet breakfast, but Becky did have to leave early to change the first "dirty" one...  Mommy and child were both pleased with the progress, and so was Daddy for not having to be a part of that one.

Just before leaving the lobby with the other 2 families to go over to the Civil Affairs office to complete the final adoption paperwork, we started making small talk with our guide about how the kids were doing.  We mentioned that Lyla is just "army" crawling and not standing a lot or walking yet.  This didn't necessarily concern us, for we have heard similar accounts from other adoption parents about kids being developmentally behind for their age due to neglect or lack of nutrition.  However, our guide took Lyla for a walk, and Lyla just didn't want much to do but occasionally tap the ground with her feet.  No standing or stiff legged walking like most children would do.  This really concerned our guide, and the expression on her face changed.  She took us aside and said that she was really concerned about Lyla and that this was not normal.  She said the words "mental issues" and we got a pit in our stomachs.  She wanted to try and get us to see a doctor before our adoption appointment, so she went off to make some calls.

Becky and I just kind of looked at each other with shock on each other's faces.  We loaded the bus anyways, and as Becky and I talked about all of this on the way over to sign the final papers, we were nervous about the possibilities.  Our concern was never are we not going to adopt her, but should we still go and see a doctor to stop any worry?  At that point, I fired off an email from my BlackBerry to our family to request prayers, and we proceeded on our way over to the civil affairs office.  While at the office, our guide once again pulled us aside and let us know that going through with the paperwork right now before seeing a doctor would make it very difficult to do anything about any "findings" of the doctor.  At that point, I just had to reiterate to the guide that we still knew that we were going to be the parents of this child.  No matter if there are more serious issues, there wasn't anything we could or would do about it here, and seeing a doctor over here would just confuse things.  We had a peace about it as we went through the final paperwork process (see some pictures above).

Once we got to the orphanage (another post coming with more details about that wonderful experience), even our guide was more convinced after talking to the nannies and directors that nothing was serious with "mental" issues with Lyla.  It is more strength and standing / walking skills due to her not getting enough nutrition due her previous cleft lip.  Lyla is also a slow eater, and perhaps that also has to do with her not getting enough food.  This girl has a larger head and her limbs are long, but her muscle development hasn't kept up.  These are all things that generally improve once the children get on a more nutritional diet and then will begin to thrive.  In the end, we thanked our guide for her concern and that she did her job to raise those concerns to us.  Perhaps this was some other battle thrown our way, but we didn't break.  Our God has a plan for this child, and that verse from the Bible in Jeremiah says it all.

Next up for us is sightseeing tomorrow, picking up the notarized adoption paperwork, and then applying for Lyla's Chinese passport.  Once we have the passport, we will fly to Guangzhou on Friday where we have several days of appointments with the US Consulate to get her back to our country!

God bless!

Paul and Becky