Our Family Welcomes Xiaoyi!

On August 14 Vaughn, Ashley, Cami, and I went to Maeser's Back to School Night. While Ashley and Cami socialized and I waited in the long lines to pay fees and get schedules, Vaughn wandered around the school. He came across a stack of papers that contained profiles of students from around the world who wanted to be foreign exchange students but still needed host families. A cute girl from China, Xiaoyi, really grabbed his attention. He brought me her profile and told me, "I really think we should do this!" It didn't seem very feasible. Sure it would be fun BUT...We have 7 children already! I am expecting in January! and we aren't exactly made of money! How could we host a foreign exchange student!?!

We called the phone number of the Nacel Open Door Representaive anyways "just to see" what it all entailed and ... it sounded like a lot of work... forms to fill out, a home visit, a background check.... Vaughn and I AVOID extra work so we decided not to bother, "We had enough on our plate already and besides, on Nacel's website it didn't even look like Xiaoyi still needed a host family and if we were going to do this we had our hearts set on her!"

The Rep didn't give up like we had. She somehow managed to get us excited enough to at least fill out the forms. Then she invited herself on over to do the home visit. I had to beg for a day to clean! She wanted to come in an hour! We must have passed the background check because on August 26, Vaughn received an e-mail from Xiaoyi thanking us for being her host family!

We picked Xiaoyi up at the airport on Thursday, August 28 (only 2 weeks after first looking at her profile)!

And I must say it has been a WONDERFUL EXPERIENCE to have Xiaoyi as part of our family! I stongly feel Heavenly Father has had a hand in this arrangement. I am very grateful to Him for making it all work out so well.