Whirlwind

The last four weeks have been a whirlwind! I have been to China and back, spent some time in the mountains with the McDermitt crew, spent hours connecting orphans from China with summer host families, marked off a number of items from the home study list (including medicals for six two legged family members and fourteen four legged ones), spent a day in the emergency room, three days recovering from a respiratory infection and spent hours trying to decide how to tackle the daunting task of raising thirty-five thousand dollars, give or take a few thousand! Being a visual sorta girl, I need a picture to make it happen! My picture, a mountain with seventy steps. The mountain represents the location of Nick's family home in China and the experience I had on that mountain (promise to share that story). Each of the seventy steps represents $500. Thanks to God's provision, I climbed four steps before I left for China. A family who shares my passion for orphans volunteered to cover the cost of our home study. Four steps, two thousand dollars the day after Nick boarded the plane for China. It was covered before he made the journey back to the orphanage! During the last week, we have almost taken another step. I am so excited to see how our experience will unfold. I spent a few hours during my visit to China at the Great Wall. The height of the steps on the wall are not all the same. Some of those steps gave my short legs a challenge and others were easy to master. I expect the seventy steps separating us from Nick to be the same as my Great Wall climbing experience. Some steps will threaten to stop the climb and others we will take two or four  at a time.
We start our home study visits this weekend. It is expected to take thirty days, maybe less to have it completed. I will need to climb sixteen additional steps before I can hold that all important piece of paper in my hand. We have to pay agency fees and post placements deposits before that document will be ours. Pray for God to make those sixteen steps doable and not to challenging, we are still early in the climb. We need eight thousand dollars in thirty days!