April 7, 2015
Our Father in Heaven has heard my prayers because our immigration approval has arrived! Praise God! This is the catalyst to get the adoption approved in China and begin the travel arrangements. Thank you, Lord! He is so much bigger than anything we face on earth. This is God's plan, and we are His willing servants to complete His plan.
I must make a correction on my last posting regarding the gofundme donations being tax deductible. They are not. However, I am hoping to receive some tax deductible donations forms from Lifesong within the next few months. I will be sending these out to help raise money for the girls' fees to bring them home with addresses I have on hand. If you would like to make a tax deductible donation, please contact me with your address, and I will send you how many you request.
Our next step in the process is to get our dossier papers (those that needed to be updated) to China. This requires notarization, certification at the state level of the notary, and lastly authentication at the state department and Chinese embassy of the certification. Once that is completed, China will process their approval called the Letter of Acceptance, LOA. This is what has to be received to apply for legal immigration for the girls. This is also what triggers the travel process to begin.
Right now our biggest hurdle is raising the money required to pay the fees to bring the girls home and travel to pick them up. Please feel free to spread our story to everyone you know through social media, email, word of mouth, etc. We need $500 minimum to be raised with gofundme before it will go public. That is our first financial goal. The donation site is:
http://www.gofundme.com/q5nfvs.
I attached Our Story below giving more details about The Luo Sisters and this unique process. By the way our adoption agency said this is the first time this situation has occurred in their decades of existence with two older siblings being up for adoption and one timing out soon. Never have they seen 4 siblings as you will read below.
Bringing Home The Luo Sisters!
Hello. I am going to
tell you about a story that is unique and will capture your heart. The story is about adoption and much
loss. The reason for the story is to
raise money to bring two teen orphan girls home.
Our adoption journey began in 2007 when we began the
adoption paperwork to bring home our daughter, Lily, from China. We brought her home in 2013 at 2 years of age
after many years of faithful waiting and changing to a new agency that was able
to find us the match for our family. Lily
has TOF, multiple congenital heart defects, and will need continual medical
care and surgeries throughout her lifetime.
We had many years to save for her adoption fee so we were able to pay
the fee without asking for help. We were
also blessed to have available credit on our credit cards to pay for the trip
to China to bring her home.
Less than six months later we were matched with a 2 year old
little boy. We knew we could pay for his
fee without asking for financial help due to the tax credit for Lily. However, we had not been home long enough to
pay the credit cards down from the travel expenses of bringing home Lily. We were able to get a loan to allow us to pay
for our travel to bring Noah home in November of 2014.
After bringing Noah home we were open to adopt an older girl
who might be hard to place due to her age.
We would be able to reuse our dossier with half the fee to China and
much less paperwork. Within three months
of being home with Noah we were matched with not one but two teen girls who are
biological sisters. The urgency of their
match is that the older sister, now 13, will time out on September 26,
2015. This means she will no longer be
able to be adopted. This also means her
younger sister, now 11, will still be eligible for adoption and separated from
her older sister if not adopted together before September 26, 2015. Both girls have vision impairment. We prayerfully accepted the referral for
these two girls. Once we accepted the
referral for the two sisters we began to wonder how in the world we would pay
for the fees to adopt not one but two children!
We made it known to our agency that we could not afford the adoption fee
for the second child as we had not planned on a referral for two children. Our agency has assured us that they will
assist us in part of the fee for the second child through more fund raising and
grants from selfless donors. The adoption fee for the first child we thought we
would be able to cover with our tax credit as we did the year prior. However, this did not happen. We were not eligible for the tax credit.
After finding out this news from our accountant we were sick
to our stomachs. As we have only been
home for three months after depleting our funds to bring Noah home. This is when we decided to ask for help. This is a humbling experience for us as we
are usually on the giving side to those in need. However, we are humbling ourselves to ask for
financial donations for the two beautiful human beings in China waiting for a
home with a mom, dad, and siblings. This
is what motivates me each and every day to continue to raise the funds we need
to bring them home.
Upon closing I want to share with you that we just recently
found out that the two sisters have two more sisters in the orphanage that have
already aged out of the system. Yes, all
four sisters were abandoned on the side of a road together. This means they have two older sisters that
are above the age of 14 that will live in the orphanage until age 18. We cannot adopt them, but we are hopeful we
can help them either be trained to work in China or bring them to the U.S. on a
visa for school and/or work. Please pray
for these two girls as their future is limited and not promising as an orphan in
China once they turn 18 and have to leave the orphanage. What I have been told is they will have
little to no chance to marry. Families marry families in China; therefore, with
no family name, marriage is unlikely.
Secondly, trafficking is real.
These girls will have to have some way to feed themselves and live. The trafficking can take many forms. Labor, sex, etc. It is like modern day slavery. The two younger sisters will not see this
fate by being adopted and coming to the U.S. However, their older sisters are
already aged out (older than 14) with no possibility of being adopted. The money raised right now is to bring home
the younger sisters that are able to be adopted (younger than 14) until
September 26, 2015. Only God knows how
we will help the older sisters in the future.
We thank you for your prayerful consideration to help us
financially with our adoption fees to bring home the two Luo sisters. God bless you.
