Sept.21, 2010

I think today is Sept. 21...it's kind of hard to keep track at this point. I will start with the positive :)
DanNi ate the most she's eaten at breakfast today, so I was thankful for that. She also ate Subway for dinner last night. She had a ham sandwich w/lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and sweet chili sauce. She will laugh and play with the girls, which is great to see. We played 'Simon Says' before bed, although she wouldn't play....she was laughing at JingJing's silly antics.

She still is not talking at all. That may sound very strange...we were not really prepared for that, but we have come to be thankful for whatever positve we can find...I am thankful she's not exhibiting rage-type behaviors, b/c we know they are common. It's very hard b/c she is almost totally nonverbal, even though we KNOW she understands a lot of our English. I made over 200 notecards with words/pictures, bought a Chinese-Engl. electronic translator, a Chinese-Engl. picture dictionary, a Cantonese/Engl. dictionary, and she is refusing to use any of them. I have showed them to her repeatedly as I have tried to use them to communicate w/her in Mandarin and Cantonese. Even when I use small phrases/words in her language, she refuses to respond in even 'yes/no'. PLEASE pray for that. We are trying to be so patient and understanding, and we know we cannot even comprehend what she has been through, but it is EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING.....I'm talking, wanting to pull my hair out, scream at the top of my lungs, hit the wall, jump off the bus, type of frustrating...I am just praying for the day we board the plane with her, to come home, hoping and praying that in some way, it gets better.

We can definitely both say our faith is being tested far beyond whatever we thought our imagined. And to top it off, yesterday our guide told us that the Civil Affairs Office called to tell her that DanNi didn't write "I want to be adopted" on the page that she signed. So, we obviously asked what that means..."Is the adoption still legal? Can we board the plane w/her to bring her to the US?"  And, Lee, our guide, says, "I think so."

WHAT DO YOU MEAN, "I THINK SO."??? WE ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT ADOPTING A PET OR BUYING A CAR, THIS IS AN ADOPTION....YOU NEED TO GIVE US MORE THAN AN 'I THINK SO.'  Again, for about an hour, our lives were hanging in the balance.....and I mean, I am about to have a heart attack, vomit all over the place, you get what I am saying. Lineker, who is the National Guide for America world, finally got a hold of us in our hotel room. We told Lee, she needed to find out for sure...and she said she'd let us know WEDNESDAY. This was Monday afternoon....and I'm thinking, I need to sleep between then and Wed., WE NEED TO KNOW!!!!!

Basically, after our hearts started beating again, Lineker said he'd never heard of what the Civil Affairs Office was requesting, this crazy statement to be written by a 12-yr-old child. He said in China, children only have a say when they are 16 years old...so all the xxxx we went thru on Friday, did not even need to happen. Lee, our guide, apparently does not know China adoption law. Well, you can imagine we have a few things to say about that when we get in touch with Brian Luwis, AWAA's CEO. And believe me, we will MAKE SURE he knows exactly what has happened on this trip...and there's a lot more that we are not putting on here about the orphanage's Vice Dir. and her conversation on Lee's cell phone with DanNi that Lee should have never let happen. Enough of that...anyway, I need to go to bed. PLEASE continue to pray for all of us. If we ever needed it, it is now.