Meet our new guy!

Meet Nathan, age 9, currently residing in Hunan Province, China.  I know some of you are wondering, hmmm, I thought those nutty Hunters were DONE growing their family.  Well, the nutty Hunters thought they were DONE too, but sometimes things happen that change your mind.  I'm sure everyone has BTDT.  Long story short, shortly after arriving home with Josiah in 2007, a darling little face popped up on my screen, courtesy of the adoption agency we had used for Josiah's adoption.  Here's the pic:

Is that not the sweetest little face?  Obviously, he is younger than 9 in this picture- we think he was about 4 or 5 here. I don't know what exactly it was about this picture, but I called Marc and kids into the room and showed them.  And didn't think anything more about it at that point.  Because we already had 8 kids and in fact had just gotten back from China a couple of months earlier with Josiah.  Because we thought we were DONE.

For my fellow adoptive parents from China (the rest of you will find this meaningless, so ignore...), Nathan was on the very first shared list.  Our agency had picked a few kids to advocate for and he was one of them.  He spent some time on the shared list, then went to an agency designated list, then finally onto Lifeline's designated list.

Over the next two years, Nathan kept popping into my presence.  I tried advocating for him, mostly through contacting people I thought might be  interested, and posting about him on some online adoption groups.  I finally brought up the idea to Marc that maybe, just maybe, we were supposed to be his parents.  Thankfully, he did not run screaming from the room, but listened to me.  We prayed about it.  We discussed it.  I gathered as much info on him as I could.  And finally we decided to go ahead! 

(Skip this next part if you aren't familiar with how China's adoption programs work.) The day after we made the decision, his file got snatched away from Lifeline since the CC*A had decided to do away with agency designated lists and put all waiting children on the shared list.  NO time to submit our LOI.  I was absolutely panicked.  What if he didn't get put on the shared list?  What if he did and some other family decided to adopt him?  I felt like he was ours already.  We were assured that he would be on the shared list.  We were assured that it was a very long shot that another family would come forward for him. After all, he had been waiting over 4 years for a family. 

About a month later, Nathan did indeed show up on the shared list.  We had to wait an additional 30 days to file our Letter of Intent to Adopt him.  That wasn't fun.  But in the end, it all worked out as it was meant to!

Here is a more current photo of our boy.  I'll post more stuff about him later!