Busy Day

Today is the day we have been planning for......we recieved Ana's passport, got her medical exam (can't get the medical exam without the passport), we went to the American Embassy and applied for and received her Visa. That means we can come home!!! We are so excited to bring Ana to the US she has been counting the days until we go to America. When I told her today that we would be leaving tomorrow to go to America she said "SUPER!!!" Gave me a huge hug and danced around. Tomorrow is the day she has been waiting for all her life, to go HOME, she finally has a home to go home to and she is so very excited. She can't wait to see her Papa again and give him a big hug and she is very excited to meet everyone in her family.
When we were at the embassy today there was a man from Texas there (his wife was not with him she was home preparing) he was there to recieve the visas for the THREE sibling girls he adopted ages 9, 12 & 13. WOW! He is so wonderful with them and said he is so happy and you could tell he truly was. He was playing games with the girls as they waited. He met the girls through a hosting program last summer. The girls were actually being hosted by a family in Florida that he was friends with and he ended uo pursuing adoption instead of the host family.
Anytime there are siblings they are not seperated they are hosted together and adopted together. At this time there are three sets of siblings and and 11 individual children on our hosting program rangin in age from 5 to 14. Children must be at least 5 to participate inthe hosting program, at age 5 their chances of being adopted drop to less than 20% and drop further as they get older.
When I see the beautiful sweet girl that Ana is I cannot understand why no one adopted her before. God surely has blessed us by allowing us to find her and making her a permanent part of our family. When I think we first saw her picture in November and she is coming home with us forever now. When I look at the pictures of her that Curtis gave me from the past three years at the orphanage my only regret is that we didn't find her sooner, that she wouldn't have had to spend almost five years of her life in an orphanage, but instead could have been being loved by us. She is truly precious and I thank God for her evrytime I look into her sparkling eyes, see her sweet smile, listen to her cute giggle, get a big hu and an "I love you Mama" for no apparent reason, ok basically I am thanking God pretty mush all the time for blessing us with this sweet little girl. And on top of all that, the thing that amazes me most is that we have an opportunity to change her destiny, her eternity by raising her to know and love her Savior,Jesus Christ.
AS I am doing my blog Ana was laying beside me on the bed watching Snow White and the SEven Dwarfs. It just ended and she looked over at me and said in her broken English, "Thank you very much Mama." Then she leaned over and hugged me and said, "Mama I love you very much." How precious is that!