some updates

(Elliott)
Mom calls me and Michaela regularly (about 1 or 2 times day), so I'm pretty well updated.
They are now in their final stopping place in Guangzhou, where Mia will become a US citizen. Mom doesn't have access to internet,but she does hope to find SOMEWHERE with it before they get back, hopefully.
I have lost complete track of dates and everything... but some time in the past few days mom and dad spent about 2 hours filling out paperwork for Mia's Passport, Visa, and so on... The rest of the week will be pretty "uneventful" (yeah right). Mia has a doctor's appointment wednesday and their Consulate appointment is on Thursday. Mia is recovering slowly from her little sickness and will be better hopefully by the time they get back.
All of the babies have to be examined by the doctors and "pass" a medical test before they can come back. Pray that all of the children get better and stay well, if they don't pass that means that they have to stay long (blah).
Keep praying for our family and all of the other families as they reach the point were they are close to coming home. FINALLY!
This week is going to be a long one for a lot of people (especially me and Michaela).
Saturday at 4 p.m. their flight should arrive in New Orleans. Michaela, my grandmother, and I will be there with open arms.


**P.S. I forgot that Ethan had put some pictures up on "Facebook," and I had saved them.. so here they are..

First Week

It's Friday morning here in Kunming. We leave tomorrow morning to go to Guangzhou. I think everyone is ready for a change of scenery. The sick babies have had to get IV's everyday and the parents days are tedious getting them hooked up and waiting while they finish their medication. Mia seems to be better today. We had given her Benedryl to clear her congestion, but I think that it was what made her very cranky. So we're just giving her something for her fever and the anitbiotic the Dr. here gave her.
The hard part of hotel life here is getting food. No one speaks english and even though there are several restaurants in this hotel, no one wants to serve the americans. Yesterday we found a Thai restaurant but when we asked to be seated they said "follow me" and took us to an elevator, pushed the down button and said "goodbye". We have had so much MSG that our heads are woozy. This afternoon we visit a park by Green lake. This should be a good outing for us. The bus rides even a short distance takes hours because of the trafffic. Please pray for the sick babies. If they don't get a clear ticket from the Doctor, they will have to stay longer. The parents are just wanting to go home. We miss you all.

Here I Am!

Mia ran fever early this morning and is congested, and fussy. We've been in the room all morning so we've had a little time to practice our walking. This afternoon we're supposed to get out and sitesee. Maybe even go see some of the children's finding spots.
We miss Michaela terribly! I can't believe it's just been one week since we've been gone. Yes, we are homesick! The trip is unbelievable but hotel life gets really old especially when you can't speak the language. It's pretty hard to just stroll the streets here. Hope everyone is well. Mia is learning so much so fast. I know she will love Michaela! WE MISS YOU!

View of the countryside-Yunnan Province

Thursday

It has been a tremendous day in so many ways. I'll have to give you the brief version because internet time is rare.
First, Mia is warming us so much. She still prefers Mike, but she is loving on me and even said "Ma Ma". We went on an adventure today in the Yunnan provence countryside. We were on a cramped bus for 1 1/2 drive to the famous wonder of the world, "stone forrest". It's a vision kin to the Grand Canyon. The countryside was a site I'm so glad we got to experience. We ate in a little place amoung the mountains. I'll have much to write about this area. I would love to upload photo's of the silk embroidry factory - the children that swarmed the bus, the small farms, the food, the poverty.....It's so much. But do know how much today was to us because Mia is really starting to love us. She's truly 18 months old - her coordination is good and I believe she'll be walking before we get home. She is very smart and cute, but she does know how to throw a fit!
I must hurry - Thank you all so much for responding. It is definitely a world away from Mississippi. One more week to go!

Daddy's Girl!

Wow! I finally get a moment to post and I don't know where to begin. First, the "gottcha" day was crazy. Last night was just a little tedious but she soon settled in a slept all night until about 5:30. She slept, but I did not. The room was cold and we were instructed to keep them bundled and warm. I was afraid she would smother under so many layers so I kept my hand on her and kept checking to see if she was breathing, just like she were a newborn. I could just imagine something happening to her on the first night and I'd be locked up in prison for life! This morning I went with half the group to buy supplies, while the other half went to apply for the babies passports. There are 5 babies with pneumonia and they had to go back to the orphanages hospital for iv's for an hour. While they were doing that the director of the center gave us a tour and even fed the babies their lunch of "congee". The orphanage is just like the photo I posted earlier except much more buildings are included. The colorful building is the school. We got to tour the dormatories and were impressed with the organization and the cleanliness. They are the control center for about 400 children all ages. About 100 are at the dormatory and the other 300 are in foster care in the surrounding area. Every nanny spoke to Mia and told us little funny things she does. She was living about an hour away from Kunming.
Mia is so sweet. Smiley. She loves to put on a show! I see her really warming up today. We go to a special event dinner tonight and it will be interesting to see all the babies at the dinner table. Please continue to pray that those sick babies get well soon. They are doing well considering.

The Joy That We've Been Waiting For!

(Elliott)

How beautiful my little sister is!. This two year journey is finally over just to start a new one. A new life has begun for Mia Grace Yunzhu Welford.

I know you’ve heard the stories
But they all sound too good to be true
You’ve heard about a place called home
But there doesn’t seem to be one for you
So one more night you cry yourself to sleep
And drift off to a distant dream

Where love takes you in and everything changes
A miracle starts with the beat of a heart
When love takes you home and says you belong here
The loneliness ends and a new life begins
When love takes you in

And somewhere while you’re sleeping
Someone else is dreaming too
Counting down the days until
They hold you close and say I love you
And like the rain that falls into the sea
In a moment what has been is lost in what will be

When love takes you in everything changes
A miracle starts with the beat of a heart

And this love will never let you go
There is nothing that could ever
cause this love to lose its hold

When love takes you in everything changes
A miracle starts with the beat of a heart
When love takes you home and says you belong here
The loneliness ends and a new life begins
When love takes you in it takes you in for good
When love takes you in....

-Lyrics by Steven Curtis Chapmen-
-When Love Takes You In-

Mia's Here!

(Elliott)
I was getting so nervous because Mom hadn't called me and it was 7:43 a.m. here and I had to go to class, but RIGHT when I was leaving the dorm she called.
They're exhausted. They met Mia Grace at about 12 a.m. our time last night and they stayed in this SMALL little cramped up room for about 4 hours! Several of the babies have pneumonia and have to be treated, but Mia is doing GREAT!
She looks beautiful, and now she has a thicker head of hair.
At first she didn't go straight to mom, instead she wanted dad. Mom said that Mia is still "trying to figure her (mom) out" (aren't we all Mia... aren't we all).
It was about 11 o'clock p.m. monday there when mom called me and Mia was still going non-stop.
I had trouble hearing mom with the loud burst of joyful jibberish that came from Mia!
After not-even one day she refers to Dad as " BA BA" (which means daddy)! What a blessing. This little girl's heart is already with us!


P.S. Mom has had ZERO luck posting pictures, however, a couple that is with mom and them is Nathan and Lisa. You can check out the link to their website on the right of this blog. There are some pictures ( one of which mom and Ethan are in the Background of) and Mrs. Lisa has updated her blog quite often.

Not much internet time here(the internet gets quite expensive). It takes such a long time to upload photos.
Well we fly out for Kunming at 6:30 monday morning, your sunday afternoon, and we go straight to the civil affairs office to take care of paperwork. We should see Mia tomorrow morning!!!(not 100% sure though). The flight is 3 and 1/2 hours long (this flying thing is starting to get old).
The great wall was incredible, and I went to see an acrobatic show while Mike and Ethan went to sleep ( party- poopers). Also we went to a jade factory ( IT WAS SOO EXPENSIVE!).
It's 11:48 p.m. here. Tomorrow we will see Mia.. Tomorrow Morning. My mind is racing, and we are praying so much for this long awaited day!

ONE MORE DAY

(email from Mom to Elliott,... She is having trouble logging in to her Blog site... Free thinking and being able to write about it isn't very popular in "The Republic of China.")
Saturday Feb. 3, 2007
We've had a BUSY Saturday and we are exhausted. You wouldn't believe what we've done, seen, heard and eaten today! Ethan has been great- stimulation is endless so his imagination is...well, you know Ethan - nuf said!:-) We will have a little more time at the end of our day tomorow. Today we had zero time on our own - we were out doing the entire time. Authentic everything. We ate Peking Duck for dinner. There was SOOO much food. Food just kept appearing on these Lazy Susan's. It was incredible. If I can get the computer to upload some pictures quicker - I'll come try to in the morning.

Today (Sunday Feb. 4th) we go a church service that is only available to foreigners (it's Christian, and that's why no Chinese are allowed to go). After the church service we will go to The Great Wall.

Must go and start the paper-work process. We've got a few copies and protocols to get ready before we leave here early Monday a.m. I think we leave for the airport about 6:30 a.m. monday and our flight to Kunming is shortly after that. We'll get all our paperwork done before we get Mia -so we'll see her pretty quickly I think Monday. I'll sleep good tonight, but I'll bet we'll be nervous Monday(sunday for you guys)!

After we get beautiful little Mia we should start to slow down and be able to do stuff on our own time. I pray that Mia's heart is getting prepared to leave what she's familiar with and be apart of a family that (although crazy) loves her very much. My prayers are that God has given her a sense of peace.

Beijing... FINALLY!

NO pictures yet, but they will be coming soon.
We arrived in Beijing after a 13 hour plane ride (wow, what a miserable ride)and we are pretty wiped out. Our hotel is ver nice, and we are right next to a wal-mart ( not like a U.S. Wal-mart, more like "34 flea markets in one building," says Ethan. Well Beijing is an interesting city with a ton of people.
They mentioned something about smog to us, but when we landed, it is definitely a noticeable thing. It's like a low lying cloud!
We are about to get to bed now (finally!) and we will start our site seeing tomorrow.
Tomorrow we see: Tienanmen Square, Forbidden City, and Summer Palace, as well as several factories I think!
Thank you all so much for the prayers and support, and please continue to do so as we stay here for 2 weeks.
Also pray for Michaela, she has never been away from her parents for a length of time like this. She knows that she must be a "big girl," but I know it's got to be difficult for her.

Chicago and Snow!

This is Elliott ( Katri's oldest son) and I am the one that mother has put in charge of updating her blog with pictures and such until she is able to get to a computer.

The family ( Mom, Dad, and Ethan) are now in Chicago. There flight went well from New Orleans, and they are waiting FOUR HOURS until their flight out of Chicago to Beijing! It is snowing in Chicago now ( something that doesn't happen AT ALL in southern Mississippi).
Continue to pray for their safety as they start their 13 hour flight to Beijing in just a little bit. They will get in Beijing at 1 O'clock in the morning Central time but it will be 3 O'clock in the afternoon in Beijing (MAJOR JET LAG)!!

God is good and in just a few short days little Mia Grace Yunzhu Welford will meet her family!

Kunming or Bust!

Can't even begin to describe the past two days. Absolutely came out of nowhere and took the wind right out of me...in a good kinda way. But we've got tickets and a schedule! Now the test is to see how much we can get done before Wednesday! Yes - we've got to leave for New Orleans on Wednesday night. Early flight out Thursday, February 1st. We will fly out of Chicago and go straight to Beijing (13 hours). I'll post our itenerary later.

Pray that Ethan's visa's get processed in time or we're out $1K. His passport is "supposed" to be here tomorrow and we'll turn it around and overnight it to VA to get the Chinese consolate to stamp it. I'm trying to prepare lesson plans and get my classes taken care of - Mike has the store to secure. And there's our Michaela. She's so excited and is being so brave about the whole thing. It's gonna be a long 14 + days without her. Thank you to all who are cheering us on. We feel your love and support.

Mia, here we come!

TRAVEL APPROVAL!

Just when you think you've got things figured out! I just knew I could wallow in this dreary January gloom feeling sorry for myself thinking we've got another month until we meet our Mia. Boom! The sun came out this morning. I was singing a happy tune all morning, then when I was walking back to my room from the school cafeteria, I saw Mike's truck parked in front of my building. Is someone hurt? What's wrong? Nothing - except our agency called to ask if we're ready to leave next THURSDAY! Can we do it? I don't know, but we're gonna sure try. My prayer warriors sure pack power. We should know tomorrow if we're in for sure. If not it'll be okay. All in His perfect time.

Translated Documents & Red Threads

We received a translation of Mia's growth record. It seems to have been done in October, 2006. That must have been the time her documents were submitted for International Adoption. How my mind ponders questions like who decides to pick her? Why did they select her? International Adoption makes up only a small fraction of all children available in China. We are blessed to have been given this child. She seems like a little bundle of joy and sounds like someone knew she'd fit in perfectly in the Welford's household.

During this entire process I have prayed for our "Red Thread" to be made known to us. The chinese have a saying that we are tied by a red thread to someone we are destined to be with...it may tangle, stretch and knot but it will not break. The date we felt the pull of this red thread was on November 11, 2004 at a Stephen Curtis Chapman concert. Nine months later our little Mia was born. I have been praying that God would confirm this adoption to me and He has, over and over again. When I look into her smiling face and read the pages of her growth and personality, I know she is ours and was meant to be.

Her foster family obviously gave most of these details in her report. It is said that "
The child was found on June 20, 2006 by the local people who reported to the police. After the investigation by the authoritative police station, the child was confirmed to be an abandoned baby and was brought in to the orphanage the same day. They determined then that her birthday was around August of 2005 and gave her DOB as the 2oth. She would have been 10 months old. It doesn't say how long she stayed in the orphanage before going to a foster family. The file also describes Mia is "outgoing, clever, active, cute, smiley, sociable, like outdoors, likes to be held and accompanied. Wave hands and kicks when happy. Likes to play games with other children. Gets along well with other kids. Likes to play with toys she’s never seen. Positive response to the strangers and new stimulation." I'm just going nuts to hurry up and meet her!

We are waiting for travel approval and consolate appointments and figure the likely time to travel will be the last of February and first week of March.

What we're learning

Mia may have been here at one point but we know that she is in foster care now. From what I am learning, foster care is in village- type housing surrounding the orphanage. Her surname, Guan, is commonly given to children that are found in this inner-city area by the same name. We took some of her paper-work to our local chinese restaurant to have it translated. Even though our agency is translating most of it, we didn't want to wait the extra week to find out more about her. From what we understood, she is able to feed herself and likes to go outside. Her favorite toy is a rattle. I am anxious to see if what they said about her abandonment is true. The girl seems to think that she may have been left on June, 2006. If that's true, she would have been with her family for almost 10 months of her life. The girl at the restaurant may have misunderstood this so we will have to wait for official translation. My prayer is that she is able to bond as a result of the nurturing she's received as an infant.
Our agency says we will probably travel in March. I've been on pins & needles again because of a new law regarding our Citizenship and Immigration paper. Ours expires on the 21st of this month. We can't bring back an "alien" orphan into this country without it. The new law says that we can't even get consolate appointments without it being current. We've been waiting on this renewal since the last of October and haven't been able to speak with a real person until today. I was assured by the officer that she would get it in today's mail. I pray this is so.

Maybe Mia Grace YunZhu?

Yun (Cloud) Zhu (Pearl)

I think Mike wants to call her Mia Grace. Can she have 5 names?

Announcing our Mia!

We are in love!