Journey to Jack

This is our story of how God is working in our lives to unite us with Jack.

Thursday, April 30, 2009

We've got a match!

We received our match today! Jack is ours! Now we need to get going on the home-study paperwork!

Posted by Chris and Leslie Fuller at 10:55 PM

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Welcome to our blog

We are excited about this new chapter of our life and wanted to share our story. Please leave us a comment or e-mail us at clfuller@att.net. Thank you for visiting our blog.

The Fullers

About Us

Chris and Leslie Fuller: We are the Fuller Family. We have three biological children, Evan, Grace and Cathryn. We also have two adopted children, Jack and Claire, who are both from China.

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First Pictures of Jack 1 of 2

First Pictures of Jack 2 of 2

James 1:27

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Jack

File photos April 09

Ephesians 3:20

[Christ] is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think.

We are so glad that all of our wildest dreams could come true and our God can still do more.

We don't believe in miracles. We rely on them!

Jack

Given name: Yuchi Xingwang

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  - We've got a match!

Our Story

Well, our story of adoption is pretty neat. We have three children, and after the birth of our youngest, we decided we were done. We even had surgery to make sure we were done. When our youngest was eight, you can imagine my surprise to feel that God was laying adoption on my heart heavily. I mentioned it in passing to my husband, who very quickly responded with something like, “What are you smoking? We already have three.” So, I dropped the subject. I truly prayed that God would take that heavy feeling and burden from me if it was not to be. This was huge and I did not want Chris to let me have my way. I wanted him to be on board with it. So, I prayed that I would continue to be content with the three wonderful children and awesome husband that I have. This was probably late October to early November.

I never said another word to Chris about it-which in and of itself is an act of God. But, it was not me that talked to Chris and kept bringing the subject of adoption up; it was God. We are members of a wonderful church here in Kansas City. The sermons that we heard were amazing and inspiring. One day, we noticed a family several rows in front of us. Their sweet little girl was about three and kept smiling and playing with us. She is adopted from China, and she stole our hearts. While we knew of the family, we had never met them. I attended a ladies Bible study upon invitation of my friend, and there stood the mom of the little girl that we fell in love with at church. She told of their journey to adopt and the miracle that surrounded their daughter’s life when they brought her home and she became ill. The friend that invited me had no idea that God had laid adoption on my heart.

We were being bombarded with adoption. From the songs that came on the radio to the family that we met at a birthday party that had just returned from Guatemala with their new son, it just went on and on. While we listened to sermon after sermon, the topics were not about adoption, but about faith; trusting God with the “unknowns of your life”; obedience in the midst of unusual circumstances; and finally the one that brought it all home: Taking the risk that God is calling you to take. That was the one that sealed the deal for my sweet husband.

We were instructed to take a piece of the board game “Risk” if you were willing to surrender to what God was calling you to do. I stood there for a long time and prayed to God that if this is what He had in store for us, then please let Chris take his game piece. I walked over and picked mine up and told God I would follow Him. I really wasn’t sure if I thought Chris would pick up the game piece or not. And I was truly ok with it if he had chosen not to. Well, after a really long time, with tears streaming down his face, Chris walked over and picked up his piece and came back to our chairs and took my hand. It was such a powerful moment for us. Without a word being spoken between us, we both knew at that moment that our lives had just changed forever.

Without a word, because we were both too emotional to speak, we went to eat lunch at our favorite Mexican restaurant. We could neither one talk or the tears would flow. We had to drive an hour and a half to pick up our kids from my parents, and we talked the whole way there. We each listed reason after reason that this just couldn’t be what God was asking of us. We had come up with reasons such as, adoption costs are very expensive and we do not have any extra room in our house. I would have to put school on hold after all the time and effort that I had put into returning to school to get my degree. Not to mention that we have taken student loans. The kids would be far apart in age. What would our families think? How would they react?

But, night after night as I lay in bed and told God about all of these things, I heard His voice. He was asking me to trust Him, rely on Him and believe in Him in a way that I never have before. And I did. In spite of all the obstacles that we felt we faced, we decided to trust God and pursue adoption. We reminded ourselves that God is bigger than the obstacles that opposed us. He had also reminded us that He is our provider and that He will provide everything we need to get this thing done. We would pray in bed together night after night and ask God to direct our paths to the child that He had already created to be ours.

Ok, this is probably the second week of December now. So, we prayed and prayed, asking God to tell us which direction to go. We were truly on board with any ethnicity and happy with either a boy or a girl. After about two weeks, Chris asked me, “When you close your eyes and imagine our new child, what do you see?” For all you women out there, you know that guys don’t ask questions like this very often. So, I closed my eyes and said, “She is dark….maybe Asian.” And Chris said, “That’s what I see!!” So, we began looking into international adoption.

I mentioned this to my friend Beth one day and she gave me the name of her friend Jamie who had adopted two little girls from China. I called Jamie, and we talked for a long time. Finally she said, “Can I ask you something? Are you set on a girl?” And I told her; “No, I would LOVE to have another boy, the drama level is already high with the two girls that I have!” So she told me of the great need for little boys to have forever homes. Let me tell you, I loved thinking about having another little boy!! When I mentioned it to my husband and son, they both said, “SWEET!! They then shared my same thoughts on the current drama level of our household.

So, we now had a new picture in our heads, and we had chosen the name Jack a long time ago if we had another boy. So, that was easy. Well, now it’s about January, and we invited the family from church over for dinner. This is the family that I mentioned earlier, with the little girl that stole our hearts. They were kind and let us ask a lot of questions. That was huge. About this time, I got on line and checked out the adoption agency we had been told about. There was a tab called, “Waiting Children”, so of course I clicked on it and saw so many sweet faces. But one jumped out at me, a sweet baby in pink with cleft lip and palate. So, I clicked on what I thought was a little girl, and the caption read, “This sweet boy…..” I was stunned, he was in pink!! So I kept reading, and just fell hard for this baby in the photo. I did the math, and knew that it was a very dated photo, for he would have already been two.

I didn’t say anything to anyone, because I tend to be emotional, and I didn’t want to do anything in this process to get in God’s way. So, we moved forward with our application. We were accepted a week later, so I guess now its February. (Note: I usually do everything in a very hurried manner, but with all of this, I really dragged my feet.)

Now, this is where I need to tell you about the spiritual things that God was doing in my life. I had been living with a great sense of fear and anxiety over a situation that was thirteen years old. I hung on to hurts and fears like a security blanket, and while we were moving forward with adoption, God forced me to look deeply inside myself. He began to pull all of those hurts and fears out in the open, and we began to deal with those, both as a family, and myself personally. I have to tell you, I thank God for adoption, because this is the tool that God used to truly heal me of my brokenness and take away the junk that haunted me like a dark cloud.

We were now on our way, the kids and all of our family had been super-supportive when we shared what God had been doing in our lives. We knew that we would be blessed with a child that has minor or correctable medical needs, because that is what God had laid on our hearts. This brings us to March and we had received the first packet to begin our home study, and I couldn’t forget that sweet baby boy in the pink sleeper. I asked Chris to come look at something, and I took a deep breath and showed him the baby’s picture. But, there was a new photo, and he was obviously older, and not dressed in pink, and he had surgery on his lip-AND HE STILL NEEDED A FAMILY!!! Chris said, “Oh Leslie. That’s a cute kid!” So, we read about him together, and closed the file, and I didn’t say anymore.

Flash forward to April 14^th, we talked about him all day when Chris was stuck at the KCI airport and we got to spend the day together there. When it was time for me to leave, Chris said, “Make the call. Ask for his file”. So, I got home and did just that, and we had all of his info by the end of the next day. Two days later, we decided to move forward with adopting this beautiful child. On Thursday, April 30, we heard back from the placement social worker for waiting children. She had met with the China placement team, and after reviewing our application and EXTENSIVE questionnaire, she told us we were a match!!! The sweet baby that stole my heart in his pink sleeper months ago is to be our son!!! Our kids are so excited and we all can’t wait to bring him home. We have been so blessed by every step of this process, and we continue to stand strong on the knowledge that, “Greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world.” 1 John 4:4.

We want to thank so many people for their prayers, support, love, acceptance, and help on this journey to bring Jack home. We are now in the process of having our home study done, compiling our dossier, and attending parenting classes. We know that this can take months, but we are working furiously to do all that we can to get our son home as soon as possible, and trusting God to continue to do that which is impossible for us. (We are praying and hoping to have him home by his third birthday, which is August 16^th, so keep those prayers coming!!) We know that NOTHING is impossible with God.

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