Mitchell arrived in Iowa Thursday night, August 13. It was so great to have our family together again and we were all filled with excitement and joy. Before going to bed that night I prayed asking God for a miracle only He could perform. I asked specifically that our daughter's file be sent to us the next day.

Flying to Iowa from Spain is pretty easy as far as jet lag is concerned. You are so excited when you land that you can stay up later chatting with family and you wake up earlier than you normally would on vacation (6-7am...not too bad). Mitchell got up shortly before 7am that morning to take a couple of work calls (outside on the deck to get better reception). :) I got up around 7:30am to be with him and enjoy some time together before the kids woke up. After not seeing each other for 8 weeks, I would take all I could get! I made a cup of coffee and sat on the deck to check my email; Mitchell was still on the phone. Around 7:45am I got a text from Lisa saying she had a file for us to review, but wanted to chat with us before she sent it. We called her right away and she told us that she had received a file during the night that she hadn't been expecting. It had come completely out of the blue. It was for a little girl named Xi Ling Jiao from Yunnan Province. She was 13 months old and had a diagnosis of mental retardation. Lisa told us the orphanage had told our agency's representative in China that Ling Jiao wasn't really mentally retarded, but they needed a diagnosis to put in her chart to classify her as special needs so she could be adopted. More often, they see children are diagnosed with down syndrome or other specific diagnosis. She also noted that she was diagnosed at 4 months of age and at that age it is not possible to make that diagnosis. We were nervous, but filled with excitement after we hung up and waiting for the file to come through.

We received her file at 8:03am and spent the next hour going through each document at great length, starring at her picture and praying. We were nervous that we would want to say yes just because this was the first file we had received. We didn't want that to come into play in our decision at all. We also had no idea what we were looking at with her medical tests. 90% of her file was written in Chinese. Characters are hard enough to decipher when they are typed, but the hand written ones looked a bit like scribbling. Some tests though used the same abbreviations as in English. I knew just enough to be dangerous with google translate. :) Elizabeth was at work that day though, so I sent some of the blood results to her to see if she could get one of the doctors to look at them. I also called around to different pediatric offices in Des Moines to see if we could get an appointment to have a doctor review the file with us. Most offices we talked to had never had anyone ask for this before and just kept saying to bring her in once we got her. Not super helpful in that moment.

Mitchell had an eye doctor appointment that morning, so we couldn't focus on her file as obsessively as we wanted to. On the way there though, we called the Blank Pediatric Clinic and they agreed to talk to their doctors and call us back. Soon after Mitchell's appointment they called us back and said that Dr. M. would be happy to come in on her day off and go over her file with us...her first availability would be on Tuesday, August 25. We were thankful and excited, however we had to make a decision in the next 48 hours if we were going to put her file on hold. We made the appointment and told them if we didn't say yes to the referral then we would call and cancel it.

We weren't very nervous about the mental retardation diagnosis, however, we did find 2 results in her chart that we didn't understand and caused us to worry. The first was blood work that had 2 positive markers for Hepatitis B. We had googled what they were and from what we could tell they did not mean she had an active contagious case of Hep B. The other was an echo-cardiogram that was only written in Chinese. We didn't know if it was normal or not and couldn't read the diagnosis. We had asked Lisa that morning if she could get it translated and while we were picking out Mitchell's (1st pair) of glasses she sent us a note that her diagnosis was "Ostium Secundum ASD enlarged right atrium and right ventricle. Left side normal." Not having a clue what that meant, we googled it and then of course freaked out.

Completely on a whim I called the Pediatric Cardiology office in Des Moines and explained to the receptionist, Tedi, about Ling Jiao's file. I asked if there was anyone that could look at the echo and tell us if it was manageable, severe, etc. We needed to make a decision by Monday morning and we didn't know what to do. She asked me to email the documents to her and she would see if a tech could look at it and give us any information. Less than 10 minutes later, Dr. L. called us back. He spent the next 20 minutes explaining what it meant and answered all our questions. What a blessing, he was truly an answered prayer!! He said just by looking at this one test it looks like the hole in her heart was moderate. It would require surgery to fix and probably wouldn't close on it's own. However, it doesn't usually present symptoms and we wouldn't need to modify her activity or worry about making it worse. They usually recommend they are corrected between the ages of 3-5yrs old. He said as far as heart issues are concerned this is very common, any easy surgery (for him) and once it's fixed it's fixed. He said as soon as we would bring her to the US they would run more tests and get another echo. With these results he would then give us a detailed game plan and a proper diagnosis.

I felt so much better after talking to the doctor, we'd been through surgeries with our kids. It is hard, but totally doable. Mitchell was more nervous because it is her heart. I agreed that it is scary, but I also thought it would be OK. We spent the rest of the day and all day Saturday talking with our families, praying and trying to make a decision. I just wanted to be sure this was our daughter, the sweet girl God had been readying our hearts for and making our paperwork and approvals happen so quickly for.

Sunday morning at church (Hope Ankeny) the sermon was totally a message from God for us. It started off as a sermon about money (Luke 12:13-21) and I started to zone out and wasn't paying the best attention. I couldn't stop thinking about Ling Jiao and the decision we needed to make that day. Then the pastor, Josh, touched on something that caught my attention and it was placed on the screen. It was almost as if God had sounded a trumpet, with bright flashing lights, saying pay attention to this, it is for you! He said "invite the Holy Spirit into your conversation, in your decision. Ask God to give you wisdom and discernment as you read scripture and discuss this. TRUST Him to guide you." Then Proverbs 3:5 was on the screen: Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. Our 2015 year verse, our family verse, the verse that started us on this journey and the verse that just convicted me that Ling Jiao is our sweet Priscilla. It brought tears to my eyes and I was again humbled and in awe of God.

That night we talked to Lisa again. We told her what the doctors had told us and then what had happened at church. She said she had requested an update on Ling Jiao, more pictures and a video and expected to receive them on Monday morning. She was right, Monday we woke up to new pictures, more information and a 6.5 min video. I think I watched it 10 times taking screenshots (to have more pictures) and falling in love with our daughter.

We submitted our acceptance paperwork on Monday, August 17 and received our pre-approval from China Tuesday morning. Xi Ling Jiao, a 13 month old sweetheart was waiting for us in an orphanage in QuJing City, Yunnan Province. She was our daughter and we couldn't be more excited to bring her home as Priscilla Mei Cooper.