The Beginning

Our journey to Gianna Grace Li Mangas began over six and a half years ago when we decided we wanted to add on to our family. Several of our co-workers had adopted from China, but the thought of adopting ourselves had never crossed our mind.  Joel would come home from work and frequently talk about friends and their adoption experiences.  This started to spark our interest in adoption for the first time.   I loved to hear Joel share some of the precious stories that he heard from co-workers and friends.

 One night we were having a family dinner at Cracker Barrel. Joel and I happened to look over at the table next to us, where there sat a family of three; Mom, Dad, and baby likely from China. She looked to be about nine months old. Joel and I couldn’t help but notice this little bundle of joy that God created.  We talked about adoption as a way to add on to our family after we left Cracker Barrel, careful not to say anything in front of Justin or Brittany as we did not want them to get their hopes up.

A couple weeks later, I went out to the mailbox, and found a DVD named "The Lost Girls of China". Joel surprised me and ordered this DVD recommended to him by our friend from work. I anxiously waited for Joel to get home from work so we could watch this DVD as a family. After watching the video, we seemed to have even more questions. We began reading books and researching more on China adoptions.  At this point, adoption was constantly on our mind.

In the fall of 2005, some friends of ours came over to our house. They had just recently adopted a beautiful baby girl from China. They shared with us many of their adventures while in China, and their experiences of going through the adoption process. We could have listened to their sweet story for hours and hours.  They were able to answer many questions that we had about adoption.  After many prayers and anxious feelings, we decided to request paperwork from CCAI (Chinese Children Adoption International).  Brittany and Justin were very excited to have a new addition, a little sister, to our family.

We waited eagerly for the packet of information in the mail.  Once it arrived, we completed the application and quickly sent it back to our adoption agency.  A few more weeks passed and we finally got an approval date from CCAI which was January 16, 2006. We were told after the paperwork was turned in and we received a Log in Date (LID), it would take about seven and a half months to a year to travel to China and get our baby girl.  We then started the long process of gathering all of our documents needed for our Dossier. We tried to gather the documents as fast as we could but it was a very slow and tedious process.  We had to have fingerprints taken and all of the documentation that we presented had to be authenticated by US and Chinese Consulate.  We completed our first home study which consisted of more documents to be completed and multiple interviews from a home study social worker.   It was very much hurry up and wait development.   We sent our Dossier to CCAI and they received it on August 10, 2006.  CCAI then sent our Dossier to China on August 31, 2006 and we were presented with a LID on 9/20/2006.

 We were incredibly excited and full of vivid dreams and thoughts of our beautiful baby girl.  We could only imagine the sheer joy of having another baby! We wondered what our baby girl would look like, how old she would be, if she would be tall, short, happy, shy, etc.  None of these things really mattered to us; we just wanted to be able to bring her home.

And the long wait began…

 And we waited and waited... and waited some more.  Days turned into months and months literally turned into years. Time slipped by slowly.  China slowed down their adoption program and we were left with many questions unanswered.  We continued to keep up with our home studies and other paperwork that needed to be submitted to our adoption agency. We feared that China’s adoption program would either become obsolete or China would place huge restrictions on the program.