The Power of Prayer!!!!!!!

For almost 3 months now we have had amazing support and countless prayers from people that this situation with Mark's birth certificate would get resolved quickly.  With no end in site we sent our Dossier to China on 10/28/11 without the birth certificate and then turned our prayers to them just accepting our Dossier without that required form.  I can't tell you how discouraging this has been for us to not know if all these months of home study visits, background checks and paperwork would even pay off or if we would have to start with a different program from scratch.  Well after a very discouraging day in which we found out it would be close to the beginning of the year before we would hear if China would accept our Dossier without Marks birth certificate I proceeded to stop for ice cream on the way home to wallow in my own self pity for a little bit.  Upon returning home I pulled up my email and saw this email from a sender I didn't recognize, but the heading said FS 240 (that is the official name of Mark's birth certificate) so I clicked and...................................................................................................................................................................It was an email from our courier in DC stating that he had FINALLY gotten Mark's birth certificate to go thru the Embassy and he is sending it to our agency today.    Oh My Gosh we are sooooo excited!!!!!  I will call the agency tomorrow to find out exactly how we proceed from here, but the is AWESOME NEWS!!!!  I am seriously considering printing off that email to go in Baby Hendrick's life book.  Thank you to everyone who has supported us thru these last few months.  We had been praying for a sign to let us know what path we were to take from here and I think this email spoke loud and clear what we are supposed to be doing.  If in doubt, then this is a sure example of  how the power of prayer really works.  Thank you all so much.

Mark and Ashley

Hail Mary Pass!!!!

Anyone that knows us understands that Fall for us means FOOTBALL!!!  We don't care if it is High School, College or NFL, if there is a pig skin involved then we are probably watching it or at least checking the scores.  For those of you that are not as obsessed with our beloved sport let me explain the Hail Mary Pass for you.  This is the last ditch, 3 seconds left on the clock throw to the opposite end of the field while praying that somebody on your team catches it and scores.  It usually has a slim shot of working, but on those rare occasions that it does work it is a beautiful thing to see.  Well this is our Hail Mary Pass.......

At the beginning of October we tried to send Mark's birth certificate to the Chinese Embassy again for authentication.  Needless to say it was once again rejected.  They say they still have not gotten necessary information and the State Dept. says they have done everything they can do.  Our wonderful agency contacted some other agency's and we think we have come up with a possible solution.  After MUCH discussion we decided to send an authenticated copy of Mark's passport with an authenticated letter explaining our situation and the reason that we are unable to provide this birth certificate.  Basically we respectfully asked that they please accept the passport as proof of Mark's citizenship instead of a birth certificate.  It seems that this has worked for some other agency's that had problems getting documents in the past (couldn't find anyone that had tried it with our specific issue though).  So we were officially Dossier to China on Friday 10/28/11, which means that all of our paperwork is on it's way to China.  We are hoping to get our LID (Log in Date) sometime in the next week.  If we get a LID, then that means they are accepting our paperwork as it is.  If they don't accept it then we should at least hear back from them with a rejection.  Keeping our fingers crossed that this works, because if it doesn't then we are truly stuck.  We will keep you posted as soon as we hear anything.  

Ashley