A miracle right here in the 21st Century!

First off, I want to thank all of you that have been praying for us to be able to get back home from China. Your prayers and mine have been answered in a big way! This post is about how DH and I got back into the USA with Gracie to proclaim her a US citizen.

It starts back on Thursday, August 9 at about 3:30. All the families in our group took an oath at the US Consulate in Guangzhou that everything that we'd provided the US government with regards to adopting a Chinese baby was indeed truthful. The oath took about 2 minutes. We were given a sealed brown envelope and told not to open it, but rather to give it to immigration at our port of entry into the USA. Shortly after our oath we all said our quick goodbyes to the families that were leaving Guangzhou for Tokyo on Friday morning and to Alison, our guide. There were tears and excitement as our time with all the families came to a close. DH and I also said goodbye to my dad. We'll see him again in the states after he arrives.

Alison had hired a guide in Guangzhou, Elvin (he called himself "Almost Elvis". Isn't that cute?!), to take us to the Guangzhou train station, get our Hong Kong tickets changed to an earlier train, if possible, and get on our the train. Elvin successfully got our earlier train tickets, and we were on the 5:05 train without incident. The train ride was about 2 hours. We travelled with 3 other families, and 2 grandmas that had come with one of the families to China. Once we got to Hong Kong, there was a woman that met us to get us on a bus that was to take us to the Novatel Hotel in Hong Kong where the other 3 families were spending the night before flying out on Friday morning back to their homes in the USA.

DH and I got off of the hotel bus,said our goodbyes to t rest of our travel group, and jumped on the hotel airport shuttle bus without problem. It was about this tiime that we started to feel God's hand in all of our travel. So we got to the Hong Kong airport (which is HUGE, by the way), and DH went to Cathay Pacific to see if we'd be able to get on a flight to LA that was scheduled to leave at 11:35 p.m. It did not look good, as Economy was oversold by 50 seats. And we didn't know how many other SAs (Space Available fliers) were trying to get on the flight too. On top of that United had told DH back in Chicago that when he bought his ID90 tickets on Cathay Pacific that we didn't need a ticket for Grace. Cathay Pacific told him we did, so we had to buy her a full-fair lap baby ticket (only $237, but still United messed up!). The lap baby ticket had a $33 refund fee if we didn't us it because we couldn't get on the flight. After deliberating for about 5 minutes, DH decided to go ahead and buy that ticket, as we really didn't have that much to lose. But it did NOT look good for us to go.

The way Cathay Pacific (CP) doles out their SA tickets is to have everyone waiting for seats on their flights come to a special desk and wait to see if their called for tickets. They told DH to return to the ticket counter at 10:45 p.m. to see if we got on the 11:35 p.m. flight out to LA. We returned with no real hope of getting on, but alot of prayer.

Here's the miracle, so play close attention! At about 11 p.m. the guy at the CP desk told everyone there was a 10 minute delay in the flight and that there would be a 10 minute delay in giving out SA tickets. So we waited. Other SA passengers were being called for other CP flights, Johannasburg, London, and then they started calling for LA tickets. We were the 3rd persons called! We couldn't believe it! We were on the flight that was oversold by 51 seats, and had at least a dozen more SAs waiting to be called for tickets. We found out that the reason we got on the flight at all, was because there was a last minute equipment change to a much bigger plane! What a miracle God performed yesterday! Praise and Thank Him!!!

From there on we were treated very well because we were traveling with a baby. Everyone was very helpful, and we arrived in LA at about 10:15 p.m on Thursday, August 9. We're still not home yet, as we have to figure out how to get from LA to Indianapolis, but we're in a hotel where we can drink the water, and most people speak English! Ahhh, it's good to be home! Thank you God for your miracle of getting us back into the US!

Oh, and by the way, Gracie became a US citizen the minute we touched down in LA. So she's an all American Girl now!!!