Tickets are booked!!!

We got the travel approval late Friday night, and finally booked tickets today! 
We have been praying about taking the kids to Colombia from the start, we know how life changing the trip to Guatemala was for them and really wanted them to see Luisa's birth country as well.  But, this trip is different than our trip to Guatemala in many ways and we realized it would not be possible for us to do this trip without someone to help watch the kids when we go to the various meetings.  We had a friend who also was praying for someone to come with us and she gave us the name of someone she thought would be a great fit for our family.  Well, God certainly has had his hand in this because when we got in contact with Mary Ellen, she was not only willing and able, but excited to tromps through a foreign country with our brood! 
Mary Ellen has spent time at Lily of the valley orphanage and fell in love with the sweet kids just as we did when we were there, and since we have many kids from Lily in our church she has made the trek up from Kentucky to see them.  On one of her trips we were able to meet her, but we are excited to get to know her on this trip! 

So, we all fly from Chicago to Bogota on Saturday Feb. 12th, spend the night in Bogota and fly out to Bucaramanga on Sunday.  We will get settled into our apartment on Sunday and on Monday we will get LUISA!!!!
We were getting anxious to book our tickets as we watched them go up in price daily while we waited for approval to book them.  Then we got approval late Friday night, and of course, the travel agency was closed, so we had to wait over the weekend.  By the time we booked them today they were higher than what we had hoped to pay and debated on whether or not we should be taking the kids.  Then God sent us monetary gifts from 2 different families TODAY, and someone else gave us an envelope with cash in it on Sunday!  We felt that God was covering the difference and we decided to go for it!  Just another way we have experienced His love through the graciousness of His people!  We are all very excited to finally meet our little Lucy, and so thankful to those who have helped make this possible!