We stood anxiously scanning the exiting passengers. “They should be here by now. What is taking them so long?” I wondered out loud to my equally excited husband.

Then, finally, there they were—Jilin and her older sister, Bubit, coming towards us pushing their cart of luggage. Oh, would they hurry up? And then we were in each other’s arms. Hugging, clinging, talking all at once. It had been only a month-long separation this time, but each time Jilin can’t help wondering, “What if they don’t come back? What will happen to me? I will be all alone again.”

But we were together again, and when the hubbub died down enough to get a word in edge-wise, we told Jilin and Bubit the exciting news. “Jilin’s adoption is finalized!” They both just glowed and grinned—Bubit because she has for so long felt responsibility for her youngest sibling but was unable to provide for her; Jilin because the long wait was finally over. Relief was written across her face. We were greatly relieved, too. Many months of waiting and bureaucratic wrangling were finally at an end. Wow!

We were just returning from a short stay in the States. We’d had to leave Jilin behind yet again because she couldn’t obtain a visa without the signed adoption papers. All the time we were in the States, we had been wondering what more we could possibly do to encourage the judge to sign the papers that had been sitting on his desk for more than seven months and in the court system almost two years. We had spent the month praying and enlisting prayer warriors.

That morning, just before we met the girls coming to Manila from Palawan, Kent had called our attorney to get a status report. The attorney said, “Where have you been? I’ve been trying to contact you all month.” Apparently, the judge had signed the papers right about the time we left for the States. Praise the Lord!

The next steps, already underway, are to file for a new birth certificate with a new name (which the court mandates), a new Philippine passport, and then a U.S. visa. We pray that we will have all these documents in hand soon so we can plan our delayed furlough. We dearly hope that all three of us will be in the States in December.
So, what will Jilin’s new name be? Well, just as her original birth certificate reflected her mother and father’s surnames according to tradition (Gielyn Limbos David), her new birth certificate will reflect her new mother and father’s surnames. She will be named Gielyn Stickney George. We were hoping to have it Jilin Joy Limbos-David George, a real mouthful that would encompass her two heritages. We want to simplify the spelling of her name to Jilin for English pronunciation (it’s Gielyn in Tagalog and Dyilin in Palawano), Joy after my middle name (it’s also a second name her mother gave her before her death), hyphenated surnames of her birth parents and, of course, our surname. However, much as we would like to have this be her official name, we would have to go back to the judge, and we don’t want to frustrate him and risk his rescinding the adoption, nor are we eager to spend a great deal more time pursuing this.

So we officially present to you Gielyn Stickney George—Jilin—our newest and youngest daughter. She is 15 ½ years old and in the sixth grade in the Philippine system. Next year, she will begin homeschool highschool. She loves to sing, she prides herself on being a bookworm, she is highly sociable and a natural leader, and she is a baptized member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. She speaks Palawano and Tagalog, and we read English books to her. In anticipation of our trip to the States, we are working on her spoken English. She struggles with that. She thinks it is more important to have you hear what Palawano sounds like and to realize that she is, after all, Palawano. But I think we have her convinced that it is important to understand and be understood. If she learns to speak English well, she can describe herself and her people much more clearly to you. She is excited to come and see America, but, other than hoping to one day go to Southern Adventist University like her two older siblings, Timothy and Stephanie, she plans to live in the mountains of Palawan for the rest of her life, doing God’s work. We look forward to seeing where God leads her.

Thank you so much to those of you who have prayed with us through this whole thing. We are anxious to introduce Jilin to you in person.

• Twitter