And so the journey finally begins

We are so excited to finally be at this point in our long journey to adopt. In January 2001 we felt God calling us to add to our family through adoption. We decided to wait just a little bit to finish schooling, move to a bigger house, etc. In August 2003 we decided it was time. So we contacted an adoption agency and began the mountain of paperwork. That agency closed their Texas office, so we started again in February. Because of the craziness of our lives at the time, it took us another year to finish the paperwork, and almost 8 months to get through the rest of the process. Finally in April 2006 we sent our dossier (all the paperwork) to China where they logged us in. But what had been a 6 month wait became a 3 1/2 year wait. In May of 2009, our agency called and asked if we would consider adopting a special needs little girl. After much prayer and conversation we said yes. We leave this week to bring Wang Jing Ya home. She will soon become Chloe Nicole JingYa Drake. Her birthday is June 5, 2008, so she just turned 15 months. She has a repaired cleft lip and an unrepaired cleft palate. We hope you will enjoy following our journey.