LOA, A Giving Opportunity & Her Name!

We were surprised to have our agency call us on Friday, January 6, 2017 to let us know our LOA (Letter of Approval) arrived from China. This was about three weeks earlier than we anticipated. Today, January 10, we sent off a massive pile of documents to USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services). We anticipate that approval to come through in about 3-4 weeks. 

We are also grateful to have received a matching grant from Brittany's Hope. Your TAX DEDUCTIBLE donation can be given online HERE. We need to raise $1,500 in order to have that amount matched equally by Brittany's Hope, bringing us to $3,000 to put toward our adoption expenses. We thank you all for your generosity toward changing the life of our little girl and helping us bring her home. As a special thank you to all who donate through this site I will be emailing you our daughter's most recent photos and provide you with updates as we receive them.

We have slowly been telling family and friends our daughter's name. We are tremendously grateful that her foster family speaks English and are calling her by her new name.

Ruth Veronica Hess
All of our daughters have very special family names, and Ruth fits right in with her four older sisters. Ruth was my great-grandmother's name and means "Loyal Friend". And there have been many amazing Hess women who have had the name Ruth. Our girls have been calling her Ruthie, and we intend to use both Ruth and Ruthie interchangeably. I'm a huge fan of nick names for my daughters: Annie, Abbey, Maggie, Carrie, and Ruthie. Isn't it perfect? 

One of my favorite books of the Bible is Ruth. As I was reading the book again and came upon this well-known verse I felt how fitting it was for our daughter.

Ruth 1:16 "But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God." 

Ruth was a Moabitess woman, a foreigner. She declares to her mother-in-law that she will not leave her, claiming her husband's family to be her family, and their God, her God. It is my prayer that our daughter, a lovely Chinese girl, will one day proclaim these words for herself. That she will feel as completely Hess as all our other girls, and most importantly that she will claim our God as her own.

Veronica is a very old Hess family name. Originally in our genealogy books it is spelled Fronica. It's always been a name Trent has been especially fond of. It means "True Victory". And with a short first name I like the sound of a long middle name. 

So there you have it! Another Hess girl is on her way! We are so excited to introduce Ruthie to you all in person.