It’s just before midnight on Monday, June 6. In exactly 24 hours, we’ll be airborne, over the Pacific, just settling into our seats for a fifteen-hour-long flight from Los Angeles to Guangzhou, China, which will be followed just over two hours later by a three-hour flight to Beijing. We’ll arrive a full day and a half after we departed, courtesy of the date line. We’ll be very tired, but at the same time, we’ll be anxiously looking forward to what awaits us just a few days later in a city called Guiyang in the center of the country. That’s where we’ll be meeting our new daughter, Peyton, in person for the first time.

Our first adoption was eight years in the making. We finished our initial application to America World Adoption Association on Christmas Day in 2006. We first applied to adopt a healthy little girl. When we applied, the wait was one to two years, depending on how quickly you finished your paperwork. But for a variety of reasons, the wait increased steadily after we applied until we began to believe we’d never be matched. Then, about six and half years into our wait, we become aware of a number of kids who had medical needs, who needed families. After a lot of thought, prayer, and soul-searching, we began to check out boys with special needs. On Christmas Day, 2014, we arrived home with our awesome son, Elijah, who has changed our lives for the better in so many ways we can hardly begin to describe it.

But in our hearts, we still felt like God had left a space open for a little girl who also needed a home. When our agency told us that China offers a special opportunity to those who have adopted once and are willing to consider other children on their medical needs roster, we went back into search mode and began to pray that God would lead us to a little girl he had picked for us and given us the desire and the capacity to love, a little girl who would change our lives in the same way we would change hers.

In September 14, 2015, we received a telephone call, quickly followed by an e-mail with a medical file and several pictures of a beautiful little girl. Although her medical needs are challenging, it only took us a few hours and a few calls to doctors, experts, and other families who’ve faced her diagnosis to realize that we were meant to be hers. So, we said, “Yes.” And the countdown began.

Over the past eight months, we’ve processed paperwork, raised funds, read medical articles, and planned for this day. And here it is. Because of the generosity of many of you who are reading this post, we are actually able to take our entire family to meet Peyton for the first time together. We’re incredibly excited, a little anxious, a little tired from all the last-minute craziness, and filled with anticipation. Our feelings can be summed up by what our two sons, one fifteen-years-old and one three-years-old, have said numerous times in the past week. Our youngest son, Elijah, keeps asking the same question, using his new sister’s nickname, “We go get Xi-Xi? I share my toys!” Our oldest son, Jordan, keeps saying, “Can we just leave NOW?” Our family is about to change forever and we couldn’t be happier about it. Look for more stories to come.