As you “travel” with us to and from Korea, we ask you to also keep us in prayer. Here are some thoughts as we prepare to return to Korea.

Please pray …

• That God will work out all the details and that we will get everything done that we need to before Monday.
• That God will bless our family time with Ethan in the next few days, and that God will be with us during our time apart.
• That God will travel with us, keep us safe, and help us to make the most of our time in Korea.
• That God will bless our meeting with the baby in her foster home, that God will be with us as we return home together, and that God will be with us during our first hours together in Korea and throughout the return trip home.
• And, of course, that God will be with us during our time of transition as a family of four, especially over the course of the next two months, which we will be able to devote to transition and bonding.

Emotionally, a major part of this trip/experience will be our first hours with the baby. If you’ve read about our first hours with Ethan, you may recall that the two words that kept going through my mind were “absolutely brutal” on that Tuesday evening in Korea (and Wednesday morning was worse). And this time, we may not have the luxury of a whole day together before our trip home (which was a huge blessing)!

But we trust that God will be present with us and that he will make the most of this exciting time in our lives. Thanks for your prayers!

As I posted earlier, we’ll spend four nights in Korea when we fly out Monday. We are in he process of making reservations to stay at the SWS Guest House again this time, hopefully in one of the family units that includes a computer (which should allow us to blog from Korea this time, too).

The guest house is fairly reasonably priced (and conveniently located near the SWS hospital/offices where we’ll pick up the baby). The big hotel around the corner is the Renaissance Hotel which is really nice AND very expensive (about $295/night USD). If for some reason a room at the guest house is not available, we’ll look for a hotel nearby, but probably *not* at the Renaissance!

We’re a little disappointed that our time in Korea this time will be dramatically shorter (4 nights compared to 8 before), but if you’ve read my recent post on mixed emotions, you’ll understand that we don’t want to be away from Ethan any longer than we have to.

In fact, this trip is about as short as it can be. We’re required to be in Korea at least three business days (and actually, now that I think about it, with the Lunar New Year holidays last time, we were there three full business days plus four holiday/weekend days).

We still need to do some planning, but our week may look something like this (and depending on SWS’s plans) …

• Monday (Eastern Time) — Fly out of Dulles.
• Tuesday (Korea Time) — Arrive in Seoul, Korea.
• Wednesday — Meet the baby and spend an hour with her in her foster home. We should have the rest of the day to ourselves.
• Thursday — We may have the whole day to do whatever we want.
• Friday — We may have most of Friday free as well, but may very well pick up our baby Friday afternoon in preparation for our return trip Saturday morning.
• Saturday (Korea Time) — Fly out of Seoul.
• Saturday (Eastern Time) — Arrive at home.

Of course, we’ll have our camera with us again. I should be over my fascination with car mirrors (unless there are cool new ones!). And, hopefully, our batteries don’t die in the middle of our visit to the foster family’s home like they did last time (although we always have fresh back-ups ready to go)!

Well, in my next post later today, I’ll offer some specific prayer requests. For now, thanks for your prayers, and for “traveling” with us!

Our travel plans are coming together. We’ve booked our flight for next week and are in the process of securing a place to stay. Then we’ll work on planning some things to do while we’re there.

Yesterday, we made our travel arrangements through Korean Air. We will fly to Korea Monday from Dulles (Washington D.C.) and return Saturday.

Last time around, we flew with Northwest Airlines. The nice thing about Northwest is that they offer an adoption rate, but the bad thing is that the trip to Korea normally includes two stops/layovers, which dramatically increases the length of the trip. In 2008, it took us 30 hours from the time we left home till the time we arrived in our room in Seoul (including some delays finding the guest house).

If we were flying Northwest this time, we’d probably fly out of Pittsburgh, which is about a 3-hour drive. Instead, we’ll drive about 4 hours to Dulles and hop on a non-stop flight to Seoul. It’ll still be a long flight (14 hours or so), but we’ll skip the layovers and connecting flights.

With the length of the trip, plus the fact that Korea is 12 hours ahead of us, we’re scheduled to arrive in Seoul just before 5:00 pm Korea time, Tuesday. That gives us four nights in Korea before returning home with our new baby Saturday morning. Incidentally, with the time zone difference, we’ll fly out 10:40 am Saturday (Korea time) and land at 11:00 am Saturday (Eastern Time) in D.C. That sounds good, anyway.

My next post will offer more details on what our time in Korea might look like. I’ll also include some specific prayer requests as we prepare to travel to Korea.

In the meantime, thanks for your prayers!