Who Will Travel, Who Will Stay?

One of our most challenging dilemmas about traveling abroad to bring Xiao Qian home is who to bring with us. Do we bring Barret, especially during this Junior year of high school, a very critical period of time that plays a high level of importance into college entrance, just a year a half a way from now? Do we bring the girls, Poppy and Willow, knowing that they're joined at the hip to each other, and especially to their Mom (and me, I guess, but to a lesser degree)? Do we bring just one of the girls and leave the other behind? We cannot possibly ask Annie to come because she'd simply miss too much of her college studies, so that's just out of the question. Do we ask friends from church to watch our children since we don't have any immediate family near by? Do we fly family in to watch our children? (Our sweet sister-in-law Patty offered to fly in from Hawaii.) Do we bring the girls and Barret, thereby significantly adding to our travel costs? What are the benefits of having children there with us when we meet Xiao Qian and spend those first few weeks together establishing important bonds? Would Poppy and Willow add to the confusion and chaos, or bring a distracting sense of calm? Would Barret, being 17 years old, add a spirit of comfort for Xiao Qian? We can't ask Barret to stay behind and watch the girls because he's got to spend too much time at school each day, and probably isn't quite up to that level of responsibility anyway (not meant to be pejorative). These questions have haunted us for months now, and we've just had to take these things to the Lord and rest knowing that it will all eventually work itself out.

While in Oregon at the Box "R" Ranch for Thanksgiving, Austin and Meagan approached us and asked how we'd feel if they came to California and watched the girls for us while we're in China? "Really?", we replied in shock and amazement, not ever dreaming that such a possibility even existed. After exploring it further with them, they explained that Austin's firm has a satellite office in San Jose, just about an hour south of our home, that he might be able to work from while living in our house. Meagan hasn't landed a job in Colorado that she's comfortable with, so she's free to travel with Austin if this was something his firm would consider. Both Victoria and I got really excited about this, so we asked Austin to explore it further and get back to us. Well, just this last week he let us know that his company was very open to this and just wanted a few more details about dates, etc... We couldn't believe it, and are so relieved that this option popped up, which seems to be more of a reality with each passing day. Just when you think you're out of ideas, the Lord brings one into your lap that is out of the clear blue, and it happens to probably be the best alternative of any by far.

So here's what we're thinking at this point, and we know there are varying philoso- phies about who to bring with you when traveling abroad, especially when adopting an older child like Xiao Qian. As much as we would love to have the girls (Poppy & Willow) with us while we travel, we feel our care for them with all of the challenges of navigating through a foreign country will simply distract us too much from focusing on Qian. They will sorely miss us, and it will certainly be a hardship on them to have us gone and away for so long, but they'll no doubt survive and will also be in wonderful, loving care with Austin and Meagan. (We probably won't tell the girls about this until about a week or two before we leave. No need to cause them to fret too far in advance. We'll certainly not say anything until the Holiday season is over.) We are, however, trying to talk Barret into tagging along because we think that his presence will, indeed, supply some comfort and peace to Qian, you know, being a little closer in age and all. He'd also be of huge assistance to Victoria and me. He was a savior to us when we picked up Wu Hui Xuan (Willow), and we're confident he would be the same for us on this trip. We know it's going to be difficult on him to be away from school for so long, but we think we can talk with the various teachers to make it all work out. Our sense is that they're going to be both sympathetic and supportive.

Please continue to pray for us as we map out all of our plans in the weeks ahead. Right now it's looking like we might travel to China around the middle of January or so. We're really, really, really starting to get excited, but have much work to do between now and then.

Zai Jian (Good-Bye),

Tom (& Victoria)