From the beginning...

We are Brad and Kala Parker of Denver City, TX. Back in October of 2006 our church showed a video during the service to promote "Operation Christmas Child." God started tugging at my heart telling me that giving to children less fortunate during Christmas is a good thing to do, and I should; but he wanted me to do more. He wanted our family to take one of these children in as our own. Okay, God has a sense of humor...I knew the toughest part was going to be telling Kala what God had told me. I spent many a night praying for God to prepare her heart for the news. He took care of it. She didn't immediately jump on board, but after some prayer, research, and consideration she was ready to get the ball rolling.

We started by researching the different countries from which we could adopt and there are a lot. After more prayer and research, we decided on China. We chose our agency, Great Wall China Adoption because some friends of ours had used them and had nothing but nice things to say about them. Next step, the paper chase. I don't even want to look back at that frustrating time. It is a lot of work, but we knew it would be worth it. We sent in our paper work on 3/19/07, and it got logged in with the Chinese Center of Adoption Affairs on 4/4/07 which is our log-in-date or LID. At that point it was out of our hands. We just had to sit back and wait, and wait, and wait.

As the wait continued to lengthen, our agency started sending out emails with information about kids with special needs who were available for immediate adoption. On September 26th, 2008, I got the email and started looking through the children on the list. I noticed a little girl who has phenylketonuria (PKU) just like Rylan our oldest. Kala was gone to a teachers' conference in Lubbock, so I sent a text telling her we need to act now if we wanted to get her before someone else got her. I was hoping and praying that she had her phone on and within a few seconds, she texted back ACT NOW! At that point, I contacted our agency and notified them that we wanted to apply to adopt her. Now there was more paperwork that had to be done in 48 hours. We got that done and submitted our Letter of Intent or LOI on September 27, 2008. Next we had to wait on our pre-approval or PA, and it took longer than what was being averaged at that time so we started getting a little anxious. It arrived on November 7, 2008 which brings us to where we are now, waiting for our referral or LSC. I'm not sure what LSC stands for.

If I had to give an estimate of when we will travel to go get her right now, I would say sometime in March. We will be in China for two weeks. We are so excited and ready to go get her. Once we receive our referral, I can post more information about her and a few pictures!