Big Miraculous Surprise!

Kristin does all the writing and posting on this blog, but occasionally I like to comment. My huge news is.., that by a miracle and perfect timing of God, and His tremendous love and grace, He has reunited me with my birth family. I know now that it is true. I was very cautious with my thoughts and emotions, just in case it wasnt true. But after meeting my birth father, eldest uncle and aunt, it is quite evident and obvious that Chon Jung is my birth father. I have so many thoughts and emotions that can't be put in words. I am very eager to get home and share them all with you. This trip has been such a miracle and blessing that I am overwhelmed. Aiden or Lee Hyeon Seo, has been the biggest blessing, but to have this also happen while we are here is beyond me, especially since all of this was only known to everyone involved just on Friday. The timing is so incredible, more than I can say here, because it would take too long. Anyways, I just want to thank you all for your prayers and well wishes. We will see you all soon.. - Lucas

Pictures!

The internet connection in our hotel room is very poor, so after waiting for close to a half hour just to send out an e-mail, I decided to bite the bullet and use the hotel computers. There's a small fee but it is worth having a much faster connection! Once I came up here I saw that their computers had a drive for my camera's memory card, so I am finally able to share some pictures! Here's Aiden looking at something on the social worker's phone. We were trying everything we could to get him to stop crying. The little cartoon on her phone finally did the trick.

We weren't able to take any pictures of us holding Aiden because he was so wary of us. We tried to follow his pace and gradually moved in to try to play with him. By the end of our time with him, Luke was making him laugh but then I was too busy using the video camera to take any pictures.

The rest of the pictures are from our stay in Kwangju. Many things happened in Kwangju that we will share later but don't really want to post on the blog. I'll just show you a few things we did during our stay there. Mrs. Yoo really wanted to take us to this Oriental Medical Clinic. One of her friends works there. It was the strangest medical visit I have ever had. We had our height and weight taken which is typical, but other than that, it was very unusual. We had to put our fingers on some pads which then displayed a bunch of readings about us and put some colors around the projected picture of our face. Then the doctor took a picture of our eye and used that to tell us some things about ourselves. It was interesting because a lot of what he told us is actually true things about ourselves that we were surprised he was able to figure out.

During our stay in Kwangju we were treated to a traditional Korean lunch. These are just a few of the plates that were put on the table during our meal. There were at least 30 plates presented during the course of the meal and everyone at the table would take what they wanted. It was a big treat to Luke, but I must admit that there wasn't much I liked. There were some beef dishes that were good to me, but I had to pass on the dried fish, octopus, and seaweed soup.


We were fitted for hanboks while we were in Kwangju as a gift to us. Here is Luke being measured. Apparently, the tailor is going to try to have them made and shipped to our hotel before we leave on Wednesday.

A lot of new buildings were constructed since the last time we visited Luke's orphanage. This building was a chapel and also included a couple rooms for people to stay, a bathroom, and a kitchen.

Here's the room where we stayed while were in Kwangju. It was tight but it was nice staying on the grounds of Luke's old orphanage instead of staying in a hotel.


This is the outside of the building where we stayed. There were about 3-4 more similarly styled buildings on the property. None of them were there during our last visit.

This was a sculpture on the property that was placed in honor of all Korean adoptees.

Here's the plaque placed near the sculpture. There were many more amazing events that took place during our stay in Kwangju. Don't fear family and friends. We will share it all with you when we return home!

Kwangju

I've still been unable to upload any pictures from our trip. We are taking plenty of pictures, so we will make sure to post them when we arrive home. Yesterday we returned from our trip to Kwangju. We took a 6:20 train down there and arrived at 9:20 in the morning on Saturday. That allowed us to have most of the day in Kwangju on Saturday. Then we returned on the 1:50 train on Sunday. Many things happened during our stay in Kwangju that we will wait to share until a later time. We did have a wonderful and unforgettable experience which included a trip to a traditional oriental medical clinic, a huge traditional Korea lunch, being fitted for matching hanboks, and visiting a Korean church. Luke's old orphanage has undergone so many changes and additions since our last visit. It has become a place for adult adoptees to stay and learn more about their heritage.

Today we are going to Eastern for a luncheon and for a meeting with the president, Dr. Kim. Our plans for the afternoon are open at this point as it will be our last free afternoon of the trip. Tomorrow we have a meeting at Eastern at 10 a.m. where we will play with Aiden for an hour and then take him with us for good. A few days ago we bought a baby carrier here that will accomodate children up to 40 pounds. After our last visit with Aiden, I have had visions of myself pacing up and down the hotel room with Aiden in that carrier trying to comfort him. We are hoping and praying for a smooth transition!

Meeting with Aiden

Sadly I don't have any pictures to show of our first meeting with Aiden. We took four pictures, but we can't get them loaded on to our computer right now. We only took four because the first half of our meeting Aiden was crying really hard and was clinging to his foster mother. Every time he looked up at me or Luke he quickly clenched his eyes tightly. He tried everything he could to leave the room and cried quite a bit. Eventually his foster mother gave him a bottle and he gradually, very gradually warmed up to us. By the time we left the room he was laughing and playing with us. He mostly was playing around with Luke because the social worker was talking to me about our schedule. We will see him next on Tuesday at 10:00. We will play with him for an hour and then we will take him for good. The social worker seems to think it's best that we have him the night before our flight because of the amount of anxiety he initially showed around us. We ask for your prayers for Aiden as this transition may be painful for him. While we are so excited to bring him home, he is obviously not eager to leave his foster mother so we are feeling a lot of guilt.

Tomorrow we leave for Luke's birth city of Kwaangju! I will try to use the hotel computers at some time to load some pictures. For the time being we are staying busy adjusting to the time and arranging our trip into Kwaangju.

We are in Korea!

We made it to Korea with no issues along the way. Luke and I are both pretty wiped out as it was very difficult to sleep on the plane. Although it is about 4:30 in the morning in Michigan it is early evening here, so we'll probably stay up for a couple more hours and then sleep for the night. We forgot the little device we use to load pictures on our computer, so we hope we can figure out another way to load pictures on the blog. We meet Aiden tomorrow morning at 9 A.M.!

Leaving in 6 days!

We've been scrambling the past two days trying to get everything arranged for the trip. We managed to book tickets for next week Wednesday. We will fly out of Grand Rapids at 8:00 a.m. on Wednesday morning. After a layover in Detroit, we will fly to Seoul and arrive at 3:40 p.m. on Thursday. We will fly back out of Seoul next week Wednesday at 5:20 p.m. and will arrive in Detroit at 5:30 p.m. the same day. Because of the time change it looks like our flight is only 10 minutes long instead of 14 hours long!! We will then have a four hour layover in Detroit before flying out to Grand Rapids and arriving at 10:50 p.m. The layover is super long, but we did this on purpose because of the extremely stressful experience we had flying into Seattle when we brought Jordan home. It took us forever to go through customs and if it hadn't been for Luke's resourcefulness and quick thinking, we would have certainly missed our connecting flight. This time around we want to make sure we allow ourselves plenty of time. We're bringing our laptop along so that we can Skype with Jordan, so we will definitely attempt to update the blog while we are in Korea. We can't wait to post the pictures of us holding our son!

Travel Clearance!

Today at about 11:55 a.m. my phone rang and I finally heard our case manager say the words I have been waiting 15 months to hear, "Your little guy is ready for you to bring him home." I was in the middle of the mall so I managed to maintain my composure but was extremely joyous inside! We are currently working on arranging flights, but think we will most likely leave next week Wednesday morning. I can't believe it is time to bring our son home!