The Daniel Family Adoption Blog

Well, our flight crew finally made it to Little Rock, and we departed about 2 hours late.  Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to Newark in time to catch our connecting flight.  Continental only has one flight a day going to BeiJing from Newark, so we have seats on tomorrow’s flight.

God bless you all,
John & Robin

P.S.  Despite our delay, we are pleased with Continental and feel that they are due a compliment.  They provided us with several meal vouchers along with a hotel voucher for the night.

We were excited Tuesday when we checked out the weather for traveling:  the Weather Channel told us that it would be blue skies all the way to BeiJing.  Nothing to cause us any difficulties, right?  Wrong!  Unfortunately, the pilot for our flight from Little Rock to Newark called in sick today .  The people from Continental tell us that we will probably not be able to make our connecting flight, which would put us getting in to China a day later than anticipated.

We are asking our friends to pray that the flight to BeiJing is delayed leaving Newark and we make it there in time to make the flight.

More news soon…

Love,
John & Robin

We continue to make final preparations for the last leg of our journey, the physical one, to bring Josiah home.  Since receiving the good news about our travel approval we have spent time researching and purchasing airline tickets, shopping for cold weather clothes (Yes, it’s colder in Beijing than it is in Texas right now, and they are experiencing temporary blackouts to conserve power!), packing the kids for their Arkansas adventure, packing our luggage, and about 6321 other things.

Our official itenerary looks like this

• January 13th–depart LIT for Beijing
• January 14th–arrive and acclimate
• January 15th–tour Beijing (Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, HuTong tour, & acrobat show) with other families in our adoption group
• January 16th–tour Great Wall and Ming Tombs
• January 17th–depart Beijing for ZhengZhou
• January 18th–GOTCHA DAY!
• January 19th–Adoption Registration
• January 20th and 21st–Free Time
• January 22nd–receive passport for Josiah and depart for GuangZhou
• January 23rd–physical, immunizations, and visa photo (great for bonding)
• January 24th, 25th, and 26th–Free Time
• January 27th–U.S. Consulate Appointment
• January 28th–take oath at U.S. Consulate
• January 29th–receive Josiah’s visa packet
• January 30th–the others in our group will be heading home
• January 31st–depart GuangZhou, for BeiJing, and LIT

We were excited to find out that 7 other families would be traveling with us, and that 7 more orphans would only be so for a few more days!

Please continue to remember us and the other families in your prayers.

God bless you all,
John & Robin

Early this morning we received an email from our adoption agency notifying us that we had an appointment with the US consulate in Guangzhou on January 27th. That allowed them to set our official travel dates. We will be flying out on January 13th and returning on January 31st. We think that gotcha day will be January 17th or 18th.

We were able to purchase our airline tickets today, and received a somewhat unexpected blessing. We had enough frequent flier miles to cover most of the cost of two round-trip tickets!

Today Robin celebrates her birthday, and she received one of the best gifts imaginable: travel approval for Josiah’s adoption.  We aren’t sure exactly what dates we will be traveling, but we believe that we will be leaving between January 13th and January 15th and return around February 1st.

Please pray:

• for us as we make final preparations for our travel,
• for John David, Joshua, and Rebekah as they prepare to spend time at their grandparents,
• for grandparents as they prepare to take care of the kids,
• for Josiah as he prepares for some big changes in his life.