I-800!

Wow, we got our I-800 approval quick! I've paid attention to other adoptive parent's timelines and it is usually about a month from LOA to I-800 approval. We got our approval on the 13th, so we were approved only 2 1/2 weeks after I sent the application. We have a wonderful immigration officer who emailed me the scanned copy of our approval so I could FedEx it to the agency that day instead of waiting for the hard copy to come in the mail and making a copy.

I sent our LOA package to the agency last week and they will be receiving it today. The package contains our original, signed LOA, Claire's US visa paperwork and fee, our travel requests and the copy of our I-800 approval. I also gathered some items to send to Claire and sent the care package with the paperwork for our agency to forward onto the orphanage.

Claire's care package included a letter to the director and nannies (in English and Mandarin), a photo album for Claire with pictures of all of us and a little story book I made for her to explain what is about to happen. I made it very simple with pictures and translated the words to Mandarin. Claire will be celebrating her 7th birthday before we are able to bring her home so we sent a birthday card that I also translated into Mandarin for her. We found the perfect card for her- a Hello Kitty 7th birthday card! We also included two bags of Jelly Bellies and I picked up a disposable camera as well. Hopefully they will take pictures with it so we have some pictures to save for Claire.

It is almost becoming surreal that in about two months this journey to Claire will end and our new journey as a family with Claire will begin. To say I'm nervous is an understatement. What if she hates us? What if she was truly happy in China with her foster family and resents us for bringing her here? While we are over the moon about having a new daughter we will most likely not be met with the same enthusiasm. We've talked about this for years and now we are almost to the end but we are in need of your prayers now more than ever. I often return to Psalm 46:10, Be still and know that I am God. This journey is bigger than us and is orchestrated by way more than the paperwork I fill out and file. This is God's journey and I try to remember to be still and let him lead the way.

Off to the Races

After several years of the thought of adoption in both of our heads and several weeks of truly hashing out details and talking to the kids we have decided to go forth and make our first step in adopting a little girl from China! I have always felt a calling from God to adopt internationally and knew I would never be able to fulfill that calling on my own accord. We are truly relying on faith at this time to lead us in the direction that is the best for our family. This is not an inexpensive way to add to our family as well, so we pray daily that God will lead us on our journey in a way that we can remain true to our debt free principles.

This will be a long road; we are merely at the starting line of a marathon. I want to jump the gun and start sprinting but I know that will only cause us to tire early and grow frustrated in the middle of the wait. China has the most extensive list of requirements of any country, we are starting now to gather those documents before our move so we can finish our home study once we move to MO. They also require an $80,000 net worth and we are just a bit short of that number. We may have to delay our dossier (paperwork packet) until we are able to meet that net worth requirement or find creative things to count as value. :)