We have been married for 18 years and have three sons that are 14, 11, and 7. We met in 1990 in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. I had just graduated from Oral Roberts University with a degree in Elementary Education and had just accepted a job teaching 2nd grade. Brian had recently finished completing over 7 years of service with the U.S. Navy and had moved to Broken Arrow from New York to attend Rhema Bible School. We married on May 23, 1992 a week after Brian graduated from Rhema. We lived in Broken Arrow until moving to Montana in 2000. Since moving to Montana we have been part of leadership in two churches along with running a marble/granite business and raising our family. God has proved himself faithful in many areas of our lives. We are so excited that after waiting alomst 5 years we will finally have our long anticipated daughter and sister into our family who we are adopting from China.
I have been meaning to write on my blog since we returned from China. Well, finally here I am! We had a great time in China- what an amazing experience! We have been home for over 3 months and have been busy with 4 children now. The boys love their little sister and have adjusted so well. She loves them also. She smiles so big when she sees them!
Janae turned one on Sunday! She loved the chocolate cake, the toys, and her birthday balloon! We are so thankful to have her in our family. She is a precious jewel! She is a thriving, loveable, one year old. We are so blessed to see the progress she has made since adopting her 4 months ago. She is developing on target, has bonded beautifullly with us, and is such a joy to so many people. Thank you, God for your hand on her life!
Today marks the day one year ago when her birthmother placed her safely in front of a middle school in the middle of the town of Yangxi. My mind has been on this several times today. I am thankful that her birthmother gave her the gift of life and we were able to recieve this precious gift. My prayers have been for this courageous woman across the world that God gives her peace that Janae is loved and in a good family. I realize this must have been very difficult for her and that she may have not had a choice to keep her. I admire her for choosing to carry her for nine months, give birth to her, take good care of her for 3 days, and then place her somewhere she knew she would be found.
Today we took a 4 hour bus ride to Yangzi County Welfare Institute which was Janae's orphanage. It was an amazing day in many ways. It was neat seeing the country side seeing people working the rice fields. We also saw banana trees and other vegetation. We arrived at the orphanage and had a meeting with the orphanage director and vice directors of the orphanage. They were very kind to answer some questions. There are 70 children in the orphanage. We visited the baby room where Janae slept and were able to see the crib where she slept. We found out that she slept next to our Heather and Loren's baby (our friends from Bozeman). We we started this process with them 5 yeqrs ago we were hoping our babies would come from the same orphanage. Now how amazing that they actually slept in cribs next to each other! It was emotional seeing the cribs as they are metal cribs with only wood boards, no mattesses or sheets. They say that is because it is hot and when it is cooler they do use sheets. That is the only room we were allowed to visit. We did walk around the outside. Even though the orphanage seemed very third world, we think our babies were well taken care of. Our babies are healthy and are adjusting well with us so we think they did get attention. While I was at the orphanage I was thanking God they we were bringing Janae home. The workers were happy to see our babies and were talking and playing with them. After eating a traditional lunch from this area with the orphanage workers at a local restaurant we went to the finding spots of our babies. Janae was found in front of a middle school in the middle of the city. We took pictures and video. Again it was emotional. They said she was found at a bench area in front of the school. The school was a big white building with a big white fence and gate in front of it. My belief is that is one way the decided to match Janae with us was because I was a teacher and she was found in front of a school. I am thankful her birthmother loved her enough to carry her for 9 months and bring her to a safe place. She would have had to do all of this in secret. She probably wasn't even able to give birth at a hospital. I pray that she finds peace in her heart knowing Janae is going to be loved and taken well care of. This is a day we will never forget. We had prayed that we would have this opportunity. Not everyone is allowed to visit the orphanages. Our guides got permission for us and made all of the arrangements to get us there. We are so thankful to have this piece of Janae's life for her as she gets older. This whole trip has been life changing. It has definetly been worth the 5 years of waiting. When we look at Janae, we are so in love with her and so thankful God brought us here to adopt her. The many tears I cried of longing for her have turned into tears of joy now! We have three more days before we leave on Sat. We so look forward to seeing our boys. We really miss them!
We received Janae today at 3:00 at the Provincial Civil Affairs Office in Guangzhou China!
It has been an amazing past few days with the best part of getting our precious daughter! She is so beautiful. She has a head full of thick black hair. She has already smiled for us. The first time she smiled was when I was holding her for the first time. She even smiled for her brothers on the web cam. They were so thrilled. We didn't expect smiles this soon. She is very observant right now. She is healthy and even has chubby legs.What an amazing experience we are having with 9 other families traveling across the world from different parts of our country. We have two Chinese guides that are fabulous. Both Janae and Brian are asleep and I have been up since 3:45 so I thinkI will go to bed and write more later. We have such grateful hearts to God for making it possible to have this baby girl with us. God is faithful!
we arrived in hong kong last night after a 14-15 hour flight! We spent today touring hong kong. It is a very fascinating city. we are traveling with 8 other families from across our country.They are all very nice. We travel to China tomorrow! we will post more later.
Jill
We are overjoyed to announce our daughter and little sister. She was born on February 6, 2010. She is only 6 months old. Her Chinese name is Song Xiao Yue. We are naming her Janae Elizabeth Song Krick. She is living in an orphanage in Yangzi county, Guangdon province which is in sounthern China. We are so excited to meet her. She has been in our heart for a long time. We are so thankful to God for bringing her to us!!
Love,
Brian,Jill, Ben, Joseph, and Luke
We have read rumors on a website that we follow that says matching is completed. If this is true then any day now our adoption agency will receive the packet with pictures of our baby and information in it! Our agency will call us the next day with that information after they have had a chance to translate everything. We actually met the sweet Chinese lady that works at our adoption agency who does the translating last summer when in Denver. It looks like it is very likely that Luke may "meet" his little sister on his 7th birhtday which is Monday. This was mentioned awhile back and he had said how he would like to have his sister for his birthday! What a memorable day that would be for all of us. Wow! I think back how seven years ago we were anxiously waiting for Luke to arrive. My sister, Lori and niece, Hannah were here visiting and we wanted him to arrive before they had to go back home. Well, my doctor helped us out and induced Luke two days before they left. So here we are again. So China and FED EX hurry along and bring us our baby girl!! HA!
It has been a week since my last post and wanted to update you and share how God is answering prayer. I was feeling anxious about the fact that someone in China was getting ready to match us with our baby. We had prayed about this asking God to help the people in China to match us with the right baby, etc. but I was still feeling anxious. On Friday I woke up feeling anxious wondering if I need to do more like add fasting along with my prayers. This was a struggle for me because I have been on this journey with Jesus where I think He wants me to give my requests to him and trust him instead of feeling like that may not be enough. See, I have struggled in life at times knowing what is enough whether it be when I was a student, a teacher, in relationships, as a mom, with my relationship with Jesus, etc. At times I have put too much pressure on myself to make sure I am doing everything right, etc. I feel Jesus has been revealing this in my life and helping me overcome. But at times especially when I feel things are out of my control, I want to fix them and make sure I am doing enough. I am trying to learn that Jesus is enough! Anyway as I was struggling and pouring my typical morning tea, I felt like God spoke to my heart and said that any of those babies in the matching room would fit into our family because they are all orphans and need a family. Then Brian came downstairs and I shared it with him. As I shared with him, I began to weep and weep. I then felt confident that God truly spoke to my heart. I felt such freedom and trust that God was taking care of the whole matching process and I didn't need to worry. It was also so freeing how much Jesus cares for me and how He spoke a few simple words that gave me peace and that it is not about me doing enough. I share this because if there is other people struggling in this area I hope it encourages you. Jesus did talk in scripture about having a childlike faith. I want to trust him like a child and freely!
We post again when we have more news! Thank you for all your prayers. God is faithful and loves to take care of His children right where they are.
Blessings,
Jill
Our adoption agency posted on their site that they think China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) is starting to prepare to match babies with families. This could mean if they progress well, we may get matched the end of next week. If not, it is alsmost definite it will happen the next week.We are hopeful that we may may get matched next week!
Today as I was jogging, a neighbor yelled out her window, "hello, Jill!" We then proceeded to have a brief conversation about the adoption,etc. I went back to jogging thinking about how nice is to live where we do. Last night we played ladder ball on the lawn, Ben helped Luke fly a kite, and we all went for a walk. It was a beatiful Montana summer evening. Luke was so excited to fly the kite. My heart was full of joy and gratitude. Jesus said he came to give us life and life more abundantly. I feel abundance right now.
I have to admit that I am feeling some anxiety about being matched with our baby. It is so wild to think a stranger across the world, is matching you with your baby. Again, this is another opportunity to trust God. Also, not knowing when it is all going to happen can also bring anxiety but I am very excited and happy that we are so close. Keep us in your prayers!!
Welcome to our blog! We wanted to create this for our family and friends to allow you to share in our adoption of our baby girl from China and keep you updated about our lives.
Starting with our trip to Tulsa in the end of May to attend our niece Hannah's wedding and to visit family, from going to the lake with friends on two separate occasions (one in which our view from the lake house was Glacier Park), a fun visit from our friends the Jones' from Tulsa, and other summer activities as a family or with friends, it has been a great summer! We are now preparing to be matched with our baby girl in China.
China matches babies with families once a month. They do the matching according to the date you were logged into their system called the LID. Last month China matched families with log in dates up to May 10, 2006. Our LID is May 11, 2006. So we missed it by only one day. The good news is we know for sure we will get matched with a baby in August which we are now in!! The prediction is China will send the matches the week of August 9 or the week of August 16. China will send our adoption agency pictures of our baby, the day she was born, the day she was abandoned along with the location of the abandonment, and the province she is living, and whether she is in an orphanage or in foster care. Once our agency receives the package they translate it and then call and e-mail us the next day with all of the information. After we sign a doucment saying we will adopt the baby, we travel to China 5-7 weeks later.
Anytime now China will be pulling our file and pulling babies files that need families and matching them together. China actually looks at pictures in our file, signficant dates, etc. to find a correlation with the baby and us. Of course, we believe God is orchestrating the baby that belongs with our family. After waiting for so long it is a surreal feeling that we are one to two weeks away from finding out about our baby. We would appreciate your prayers at this time. We are abviously very excited but also have some anxiety too. Thank you so much for all of you that have encouraged and prayed for us over these past several years. It has been quite the journey but God has been so faithful to us. So many times He has placed people in our lives to speak encouraging words, give us scriptures, etc. in addition to Him personally speaking into our hearts.
This is a scripture that has been presented to me by my sister, a friend, and from a blog, so I want to share it as I feel confident God wanted me to recieve it. It has encouraged me along this journey. I hope it encourages you in whatever journey you are on right now.
"I will go before you and will level the mountains, I will break down gates of bronze and cut through bars of iron. I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know I am the Lord the God of Israel, who summons you by name." Isaiah 45:2-3
Jill
