Match Day

This morning I received a very unexpected phone call from the adoption agency we are working with (FTIA). To my shock, they were calling to let us know that we had been matched to a little girl with a cleft lip and palate. I was told that we had until 5:00 to turn in a bunch of paperwork, get the child's file reviewed by the International Adoption Center at Children's, and make a committment to proceed. After an insane day of running around town, making phone calls, writing out answers to essay questions, and sending lots of e-mails, we made our decision and turned in our paperwork. If all goes well (they make no guarantees), we will travel to China in 5-10 months and pick up our little girl (DOB 8/10/07).The crazy thing is that we were not expecting to be matched for at least a year (3-5 years if we stuck with the non-special needs program). We told our agency that we were looking for a female child (there are more boys in the special needs program) under 18 months (also pretty rare) with a cleft lip and palate. Because we were so specific in our desires and because we were told that we were the 40th family on the waiting list (only a few children are matched per month), we had no expectation to hear anything so quickly. I asked our agency how this happened and they said that they are as shocked as we are. They said that it makes no sense why we would have matched us right now. The other awesome thing is that the doctor who reviewed the child's file, raved about her health. She couldn't get over how healthy the child appeared and told us that the cleft didn't look that serious.We couldn't help but take those things as signs from God and move forward!