I would say that our referral day 
didn't really start on a good note.

Kenny and I had been sent a Vietnam update from Nicky Losse, the Vietnam program coordinator for Children's Hope in St. Louis the night before (Thursday) saying that so many people were on the waiting list in the Vietnam program that the wait for an infant girl had grown to 12 - 16 months. I was devastated. I knew that it was going to be quite some time before I was able to hold my daughter in my arms. When Kenny and I went to bed that night, we talked about what the numbers meant and wondered whether this was God's way of saying we should be getting a boy, as the wait for a boy was only 4 -6 months at that time. We went to sleep praying that God would give us the answers.

The next morning, I told Kenny that I was going to call Nicky and ask about a little girl that had been on the waiting child list for a long time. "Waiting children" are kids that have some kind of medical condition that keeps them from qualifying as healthy referrals. Kenny and I had agreed to look at waiting kids on a case by case basis. We knew that at that time in our lives, we were not adequately equipped to deal with extreme special needs children, but we wanted to stay open to the possibilities. So, I called Nicky Friday morning, and I was told that the girl I was asking about had severe medical issues and that she was no longer in a CHI orphanage. Nicky told me she shouldn't even be on the list anymore. My heart sank as I realized we still didn't have even the possibility of a child.

THEN... Nicky said, "But, I just got the referral of another little girl. Would you like me to send you her information?" She explained that the little girl was born to an HIV+ and Hepatitis C+ mother, and that she had tested negative for HIV but was testing positive for Hep C. Nicky said that the orphanage believed the little girl would eventually test negative for Hep C, too. Nicky said she didn't know what age range we were looking for, but the girl was about 4 1/2 months old. I told Nicky to send her information right over!

And then... I saw the pictures of my daughter for the first time. When I saw her photos, I began to cry. I knew that she was our daughter. I made Jill come to my desk and look at the photos of this beautiful baby girl who looked so incredibly healthy that I had a hard time believing she could possibly be sick! Her diaper was a strange fashioning of some kind of cloth, and there were all of these extra appendages in the photos that didn't belong to her. But, she was beautiful, and I knew she was ours. I called Kenny to share this information with him, and of course he didn't answer his cell phone (he never does when it's important!). I ended up sending the pictures to him by camera phone so he could see the little girl I'd fallen in love with moments before.

We talked at great length that night about what it would mean for our daughter to grow up with Hepatitis C. I had talked to 2 doctors and 1 nurse about Hep C and how that would affect her life. I was told that it can be a very serious condition if not monitored, and that it would be important to check her liver enzyme levels several times each year. We talked about the possibility of passing it to someone else, and what we would have to do as parents to protect her and other people from contracting the disease. What about when she's grown up - will she be able to get married and have children? We talked about the risks for a great length of time, but in the end, we agreed on one thing: she was our daughter, and whether she lived here in the US or in Vietnam, this little girl could potentially have this condition for life - and she might as well spend her life with a family who loves her.

So, we officially accepted the referral on Monday, July 17th. We called Nicky in St. Louis and told her we wanted to adopted Ho Thanh An. She said the paperwork would be overnighted to us so that we could sign the documents and that we should send them back to her. We got the big UPS package the next day, signed everything (Kenny had to come to the CHI office to sign the papers) and then we overnighted it back to St. Louis.

It was so hard to believe that we went from the despair of thinking it would take over a year to bring our daughter home  - to holding a photograph of her - all in just 24 hours. God really does do AMAZING things, and it was truly an act of God that brought us together with our forever daughter. I cannot think of any other possible reason that things lined up the way that they did, and I will forever praise God for his miraculous works.

Kenny and Allison traveled to Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam to meet and adopt Kennison during
Thanksgiving 2006. She turned 9 months old the day after their Giving and Receiving Ceremony.