A Diamond in the Rough

As I have combed the Chinese web browsers over the past few weeks, I was rewarded with this picture late Saturday night. At about 11:00pm I copied and pasted the Chinese character of Mariah's name into the search engine. Then I scoured through about twenty "finding stories" to come across this sweet baby. Even though Google Translate would not translate the file that was embedded in this specific site, I still saw our baby. Then I sat and cried.  I was able to match the Arabic numerals with the dates of her birth and finding. There she was, just staring back at me. 

Jeremy was in the shower.......so I did what any good wife/mommy would do, I practically screamed. He came pretty fast!  He had no idea that I had been searching for weeks for her finding picture. When he saw it, he was in awe. How blessed we were to come across this little "diamond". She was tucked away toward the bottom of the list of about twenty other babies. He story was very similar to the others. We were truly amazed that we found her picture and her story. 

As we sit here and recount her story, it is truly God's story. He ordained her to be born in China. He ordained her to be our daughter! Mariah Claire Lu Ping Kaminski is just as precious as any of our children. Kyle, Micah, Rebecca, and Benjamin are our children born in the United States and Mariah is our daughter born in China. There is really no other way to see it. She is ours! She does not look like us, but she is definitely a Kaminski! 

Jeremy and I were just talking about our journey. We stand amazed at God's plan for her life and ours.  We began our journey in full force in December of 2010, on our knees in prayer. We were not sure where we were being led. What was God doing in our hearts? This is when Mariah was born......December 14, 2010.  This baby's birth was known to the Lord but we had no idea that our daughter had just been born! It is amazing to see how the details of this journey are being revealed to us in little bits and nuggets. God is so good! 

Yesterday, I spent a good part of my morning arranging for a cake to be delivered to Mariah at her orphanage. We asked for a letter to be translated to the orphanage director. In that letter we thanked them for loving our little baby and asked that they would celebrate her Forever Family (us) with the director, nannies and other children she lives with by eating some of that delicious cake. We are hopeful that the orphanage will share pictures of the celebration. I cannot wait to share those pictures with all of you.

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart.."

Jeremiah 1:5