We got a wonderful surprise this morning. I got a call during Bible study, and I saw it was our agency. Now, you gotta know how much I love the study I’m doing. It took a very important call to pull me away from my BFF Beth Moore! Bless her heart, the first thing our rep told me was “I don’t have any news on first approval for you.” Well, darn it! But smart girl to lead with that. “But, I wanted to let you know that when I was in Thailand last week, I visited your son.” !!!! Tears sprung to my eyes immediately, I hadn’t really thought that this would be a possibility! I’ve never spoken to someone who has seen, touched, heard, smelled our little guy. She got to spend a little time in his foster home and observe him and took notes, pictures and even a few short videos!
I’ll try to remember all the things she shared. I’ve photo-dumped the pictures on our password protected site HERE and the password is my maiden name, all lower case. If you’d like the password, leave a comment or email me at brazenlilly@gmail.com (I don’t check it often, but I’ll try to!). She also sent a couple very short videos, but wordpress doesn’t like the format, so you may not get to see those unless you are a friend of mine on FB! I will say–they had him wearing a shirt of Carson’s that we sent several months back, and a little baseball hat on backwards! It was perfect. I think it may become his signature style. Oh, and some pink. He’s wearing pink shorts and sandals! Love it.
First, she said Asher looks very happy and healthy. He has a couple spots on his face, but she said the foster mom thinks they are bug bites or a small rash. It is not typical and has only been there for a few days. She said he has grown out of all the clothes we have sent! Laura, our rep, gently said she wanted to warn me that of all the foster kids she visited, Asher was probably the most reserved & guarded, the most unwilling to come near her. Foster mom said she can’t think of any other white people he’d ever seen, so he was pretty taken aback. We are preparing ourselves mentally–as much as you can without living it–for a traumatized and grieving little man. But we are so, SO grateful for the steady love and affection he’s received from this family since he was 4 days old.
Asher is very attached to his foster mom, and she is very natural and fun with him. She’s a younger mom and even though she had her own baby a couple months ago (news to us!) she has lots of energy and played with Asher. He says bye to his foster dad each day when he heads out to work. He says several words in Thai–including the names of all the family members. She said one little game he was playing while she was there was to “go shopping.” They handed him a handful of bat (Thai money) and he would walk around the room and give a little bit of it to each person, jibber-jabbering to himself.
The other important piece of information that Laura passed on was that she had a sit-down meeting with social workers from the Thai government–this is separate from our sister agency. They are the ones who have our case right now, the ones we are waiting on. She said she firmly conveyed to them the importance of catching up on the files that have been delayed, and tried to remind these workers that these papers represent families who have already become attached to these children, who have a permanent home ready for them, and that it is important to catch up from the delays caused by the floods. She specifically pleaded for three cases that are delayed, and ours was one of them. That was huge for me–to know that someone was there speaking for us, advocating for our family. She said communication has been bad between countries this week, but there is still a possibility that our family was given first approval last week. However, the more likely situation is that we will be presented next Wednesday, February 15th.
That’s definitely what we are hoping and praying for, but the Lord knows how my waiting heart has been soothed today with this blessing. Although, I’m even MORE anxious to get to him and begin the rough transition so we can enjoy our little man! Thank you all for being excited with us…it makes the joys more joyful and the lows more endurable.