What a week!!

This week has been one full of ups and downs. As you saw in my last post, our immigration approval arrived-which meant we could get our dossier mailed to the courier. The courier then takes this whole pile of paperwork to the State Department in Washington DC, then to the Chinese Embassy-also in Washington DC for the "sealing process."  The State Department verifies the prior certifications on our documents-basically they put their stamp on it saying we are not big liars or forgers. Then the Chinese embassy says "YES! ADOPT YOUR BOY!! (as soon as you jump through 4 more months of government hoops)"  Long story short-we had a major potential setback on Tuesday night after our agency emailed telling us there was a potential problem with an extra staple (yes, you read that right, a staple) on one of our documents. The Secretary of State here in Idaho had attached an extra page-which meant there were 2 staples when there should have been one and the letter they attached was not supposed to be attached to the exam form. Without going into long boring detail that only those of us in this weird adoption vortex love to chatter about-the potential problem turned out not to be a problem-but it was a harrowing 16 hours of waiting to figure out the problem on Wednesday morning. Moral of the story-extra staples are bad on government paperwork.

In exciting news, we should have our dossier back to us by late next week, (insert HUGE SIGH OF RELIEF) we then can review it (again), send it off to our agency and then it will be reviewed there, sent to China and translated! From the point it is logged in the Chinese system-we have what seems to be a 4 month wait of more paperwork and fund raising before we go bring our boy home to his family-to the home and people he has never known but who love him already.

We do need your help and support. Please spread the news to anyone you know about our adoption auction, please invite people and above all please pray that God will be used to open all of our eyes to see how very much we all have in this country and how much we can give-not just to our family and our specific adoption-but to all of the children out there who have never had a home, who don't know what it is to have stability, food every day, to be snuggled into bed at night.

Thank you all so much for your love and support-and see the sidebar! We have had more donations from our change jars that we deposited last week into our adoption account. As always, we are grateful and overwhelmed by your love and prayers.