The season approaching

There is a season for different kinds of Gospel/Good News spreading. It doesn't look the same for all of us. Sometimes it means reaching outwards to strangers. Sometimes it means reaching inward to make a stranger part of your family. It is clearly time for the latter for our family. In other seasons, we will be equipped for other ministry. For now, our focus is JiaYun and helping our family be as healthy as possible during this transition.

All that said, the Lord, as always, has the whole world in His Hands. So, we are trusting him with the major needs of the day as we embrace our little piece to live out His passion of hope and restoration in this avenue of adoption.

Last week we got our final official update from the orphanage on JiaYun. A few new pictures and a video and answers to 7 or so more questions!  They have been SO responsive to us. We've gotten 4 udpates since March. With each update, we get more small glimpses into her life. This time we learned she likes to make goofy faces. How fun is that!?

Each time we get an update, it means we have more records to show her about her early life as she gets older. I'm so thankful for these. Last time, when we went to Ben's orphanage we saw his baby, baby picture for the first time. We didn't know if we'd get one of those. It's a bit blurry, but it's his favorite picture. I'm hopeful we will receive one of JiaYun when we get to her orphanage as well.

We also got news this morning that our picture book made it to JiaYun's orphanage! So, hopefully within the next day or so she will see our faces for the first time. A representative from our agency who lives in China translated explanations under each picture for us. Please pray that the staff presents adoption in an age appropriate and positive way to JiaYun. Typically, they see adoption as a good thing. However, sometimes there can be qualifiers added to it like "be a good girl so your family keeps you".  Please pray for JiaYun's heart to be protected from any notion that she will need to perform or behave well in order to earn our love. You could pray also for her caretakers to know the unconditional love of their Savior as well.

So...now the question that we get asked the most often...."When do you travel!?" We will not know exactly until we get Travel Approval and lock in a Consulate Appointment with the Chinese government. We tailor our flights around that one appointment.

However, based on the estimates of our last few steps of the process...we hope to get Travel Approval the 2nd week of September. If we can lock in our Consulate Appointment a few days after that, we can book our flights for October.

China is pretty good at parties. And we are running into two of them with our travels. The Autumn Moon Festival is the first week of October, so that rules out a few weeks in early Oct. and then there is more celebration near the end of the month. It won't interfere with our government processes, I don't think, but it just means for potentially other things to maneuver while we're in country.

However, as it stands, we're hoping to leave mid October and arrive home early November. We're thankful for family and friends who are willing to step in to love on and take care of Annie, Jude and Ben here while we travel across the oceans with Timothy. TJ is highly anticipating his first international flight. We'll see how excited he is about it all after the 22 hour flight. But overall, TJ has a pretty positive outlook on life, so he'll make the best of it.

To try to stay ahead of the prep and potentially it's a bit of 'nesting', this weekend we looked for the bins of 2T/3T clothes we saved from Annie to get out and start washing, etc. Well it turns out, we must have gotten rid of them because they are nowhere to be found! So, if you happen to know anyone who wants to rehome their little girl clothes, feel free to send them our way!

So, that's the update on our end. As we, and most of the country preps for school, we look forward to the routine and consistency that it all brings. If you read our blog last time around, you may remember Ben was a runner. So, in June, a month after he was home, I was likely the only person in Minnesota wishing it were winter time so we could stay contained inside for a bit! JiaYun will be coming home in the season of fall/early winter. So, I will get my wish this time around :)

We have thoroughly enjoyed our summer. Both our travels and our time at home. It's our second summer in our new house, so it's nice to have the 'newness' gone and everything feel just a little more settled. Just in time to rock the boat again with another family member!

(We couldn't let ourselves get TOO settled!)

Happy Labor Day to you all!
Courtney for the Hubers family

Enjoy a few of the pictures JiaYun will be seeing this week of her new family and home.

I'm not an English teacher, but....

Part of being an adoptive family means discerning when it's a time to be quiet to honor your child's personal story and when it's a time to enlighten or educate. Ben and JiaYun's stories are their own and we will be navigating how much to share on their behalf about their backstories vs. how much to let them share when they are older. However, on a whole, I do feel free to share a few thoughts on adoption in general.

The word "adoption" is used in multiple situations in our English language.

Adopt a highway.
Adopt a piece of legislation.
Adopt a pet.

What makes adopting a child different from all these other uses of the word?

Adopt a highway : A group of people in an organization taking a designated time period to clean up a road on a semi-regular basis.

Adopt a piece of legislation: Some laws stay the same, but many laws come and go, often depending on who is in leadership.

Adopt a pet: Bringing a pet into your home. This can either be a commitment for the pet's life, or until you change apartments and they don't allow pets.

If you look up the word 'adopt' in the dictionary, the very first definition is "to legally take another's child and bring it up as one's own".

So, while this is the primary definition, I can't help but wonder how our children, who have been adopted into our families, are affected by years of having the same word used to describe their family's status as an organization who cleans up a road or a law that changes with the current political party. Does it subversively minimize the commitment their parents have to them? Does it undermine their permanency as a legitimate family member? Does it slowly erode their sense of worth?

In fact, take a minute to google the word "adopt" and see what the predominant theme is. Don't forget to check 'images'. For me, this is the most challenging one because I have heard way too many stories of people sharing the two "adoptions" as so similar. They are not.

And while we're on the topic of words. Some common phrases in adoption conversation often include "your own children" vs. "your adopted children" or "real mother" vs. "adoptive mother".  Or even "You are so lucky to have a family now". These can be tricky to maneuver.

However, I hope Ben and JiaYun will always hear Kevin and I gently affirm we are both very real parents and that their birthparents are very real as well.

I hope Ben and JiaYun will always hear us stand up for them as we remind those in the conversation we are proud they are both very much our own children.

And actually every child deserves to have a family, so we hope our children don't feel lucky at all. They just now have what they should have had all along.

But these interactions can take their toll over the years. Ultimately, it is our job to help equip all five of our kids in how to navigate these conversations and many more while pouring truth over them behind the scenes. At the same time, my hope is that we can work towards being more aware of how our words can affect our kids.  If you are reading this blog, I'm guessing you care about our family and you value adoption. So if there is ever a chance where you could use a different word, or could rephrase something to make sure a child who was adopted feels validated, consider doing that.

Sponsor a highway.
Change a piece of legislation.
Own a pet.
Your parents are so blessed to have you for a kid.

Small shifts in perspective and language can go a long way. Words do have power.

So, those are my deep thoughts for the day. As far as Hubers family adoption process logistics....we are waiting for our I800 application to be approved. We hope for this to happen next week, which then means we get a special number that we need in order to submit our next form which helps JiaYun's visa start to be prepared in China. We had a small glitch a few weeks ago (submitted out an outdated I800 application form), but we are feeling at peace and not too shaken by it (anymore :). Lots of good stuff happening on the logistical front.

We are also currently in the process of taking pictures of us and our home to send over electronically to someone who will make a book for her in China. It's the kind of thing where we don't want to send it too soon, as we don't want her to get anxious about her transition coming up. But we want it to get to her before we do, obviously. Then there's a bit of room switching taking place, getting her bed into our room and figuring out where her clothes will go. Kinda makes it all real!

I was out at the store with Jude the other night and in the parking lot, I asked him if he feels ready to have another person in the family. He told me that yesterday on our hike, he was behind us all and looked up. When he saw the rest of us ahead, he told me he thought it looked like a small number of people. So, his answer was "yes", he's ready to add JiaYun :)

I promise I'll try not to wait another month to write an update as things start moving a bit faster at this stage in the game. We appreciate your prayers for JiaYun's little heart as this big change is coming up for her. We appreciate your prayers for our family too, to be ready to make adjustments and sacrifices again. We are trusting Jesus as our Shepherd to be tending all of us right now, in his gentle and perfect ways.