Things are continuing to progress with the adoption. We are now in the waiting process with US
Immigration. Any day now we’ll be
getting our I-800 Provisional Approval, then we can get going on our visa
application, and after a few more forms and approvals, we’ll be on our way to
China!
In the meantime, we’ve finalized our son’s new name! When you adopt a child, you give them a new
name. At minimum, they get your family
name, but you can also give them a new first and/or middle name. Our son’s Chinese name is Wang Yi Nan. Wang is the last name, Yi Nan is the first
name. We don’t know where this name came
from. In China, abandoning a child is
illegal, so there is no indication of who the original family is. So the local officials typically give the
child a name. Since Yi Nan is just under
18 months old now, he can probably recognize his name, but likely doesn’t have
a strong attachment to it yet. And growing
up in the US, we feel it will be easier for him to have a common western first
name. But we also want to honor his
Chinese heritage by keeping his Chinese name as a middle name.
So we are pleased to present: Samuel YiNan Weckesser
Samuel is from the Hebrew and can mean “God has heard”
(see 1 Samuel 1:20 and note). This name
seemed particularly appropriate since we prayed for years for a second child, so
this adoption shows that God heard and answered our prayers. The Bible also talks about how God hears the
cries of the orphan and all who are oppressed.
We know that Samuel YiNan was abandoned when he was just a few days old,
and found near a factory entrance. God
heard the cries of this abandoned newborn and caused him to be rescued and
brought to a safe place, where he was taken care of, treated for his medical
disabilities, and eventually released for international adoption and matched to
our family. Even though this child’s
life started in tragedy, the Lord turned this evil into good, and gave him a
hope and a future. We pray that we can be
used by God to bring good into this child’s life.
Samuel was also the name of the great Old Testament prophet,
who served God his whole life. Despite
growing up apart from his birth family, he trusted God and served Him
faithfully. God even spoke to him
directly when he was just a boy and he listened to Him carefully. We pray our son will learn to trust the Lord,
and listen to Him well.
Samuel is also a family name: Gabriel’s maternal grandfather’s
last name was Samuelson, and that grandfather’s grandfather’s first name was
Samuel. So as our Samuel is being
grafted into the Weckesser-Samuelson-Jerdan-Hagen family tree, he bears the
name of one of his adoptive ancestors.
We don’t know if Samuel YiNan’s Chinese name was given him
for a particular reason, but it is made up of 2 Chinese characters. Unlike most western names, which are separate words only used as names, Chinese names are taken from common vocabulary, so they have particular
meanings in everyday language. We were told that Yi means
already or afterwards, and Nan is a Chinese Cedar, which is a special kind of tree
whose wood is very precious. We are
keeping this combination name that was given him as a newborn, to honor his
Chinese identity (and keeping the N capitalized to help westerners pronounce it as 2 separate syllables).
So as our Samuel YiNan grows up, we hope he finds meaning in
the significance of both his first and middle names. We're looking forward to bringing him home soon!
