Flights booked

We got confirmation on our appointment dates in Ch*na.  We are definitely having a Gotcha Day of May 13th, which means Mother's Day evening here.  Our consulate appointment is set for May 22nd.  This was not our first choice, it wasn't even our second choice, but at least it didn't get pushed to the following week.

Our flights are booked.  The Lord answered many of our prayers in regards to travel.  With all of the traveling Scott has done over the years we were praying and hoping to make use of some of his frequent flyer miles for this trip.  When Scott was booking our outbound flight there were no seats available for Award travel which meant we would have to purchase our seats or find a different flight.  While he was on the phone with the airline agent out of nowhere two seats suddenly popped up available and in the end he was able to book those very seats WITH his miles!!!  We have every reason to glorify the Lord over the flights we booked.  We were able to book our two flights to Ch*na and all three of our flights home, which if we had to pay out of pocket would have cost $5200.00, but thanks to those frequent flyer miles we only paid $577.00.  The out of pocket money was taxes and a fee they charge to guarantee that our three seats home are together.  After our disastrous trip home from California last fall I am here to tell you that fee is worth every cent to us!!!  We have been praying that we would be able to book the direct flight from Newark to Beijing and the direct flight from Hong Kong back to Newark and we were able to get both.  All of our travel there and back, exactly the way we wanted it, and at very little expense is yet another "exceedingly abundantly more than we could ask or imagine" moment in this journey.

When we had our travel phone conference with our case worker back in March one of the topics discussed was the substantial financial need required to complete the travel, gotcha day and final adoption fees.  The number was really high and needless to say we were coming up about $5,000 short on the total.  I specifically remember that night feeling that same blow-to-the-gut feeling I have felt several other times before.  Those moments where you forget about faith and God and instead trust in those old companions of doubt, worry and fear. Through what we are saving in our airline costs we have exactly what we need to finalize everything.  All our travel expenses, our government fees, our orphanage fees, our translator fees, it's all covered.  Amazing, isn't it?  Just amazing.