4-3-07 REFERRAL DAY!!!!!!!!

The new waiting list of special needs children came in. Heather called us on Tuesday afternoon to tell us. There are three girls on the list. One is five years old with a heart condition, one is 16 months with Strabismus (turned in eyes) and one is 10 months old with Hep B. All are from the same orphanage in Guangdong. We tell Heather that we wish to review the two youngest girls files, because we want Jade Lin to be a real big sister, with a younger sister. Heather will be gone on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and we forget to ask our agency for photos, which is the way I know we will make our decision. Friday Heather sends us terrible black and white photos from her home scanner. Scott can see already that the little 16 month old girl is a "Cutie!!" and is drawn to her immediately. I'm not as sure from the bad photos. I tell Heather that we are considering both girls but need better photos. On Sunday, Heather e-mails us beautiful, clear, colored photos. I wonder if she drove into the agency on a Sunday for us and for these two girls and e-mailed the photos on her own time. What an angel! Maybe it was God and his angel but we decide instantly that Gao Shao Qiao, the 16 month little girl is our daughter!!! We are ecstatic!! We e-mail her medical info to the Internationl Adoption Clinic at the U of M and find out that Strabismus is a very curable condition and she with proper medical attention will be better then fine. She may require a minor surgery to align her eyes, maybe some eye patching therapy and maybe glasses but we are prepared, willing and blessed to have her and will do everything we can to help her and love her! The decision is amazingly easy. We find out later that our adoption worker had the same condition and received more postive information and one of the girls in our travel group also had one eye that she had treated for the same condition. It was so wonderful to have such positive information and stories. We knew we were able to provide the care that Gao Shao Qiao would need. We were on top of the world and couldn't wait to share the happy news and photo of our future daugthter!
Jade Lin almost instantly told us, " I want to name her Meizi Meilin Rose" which seemed to fit our daughter, amazingly and the moment I said the name, I knew it was destined to be her chosen name. How fitting that her big sister, Jade Lin would be the loving one to name her;-)