Home Study Visits DONE!

We had our 4th (and final!)home study visit today! Every day we are getting closer to getting our paperwork over to China. Our social worker should have our report finished by the middle of this week to submit to our adoption agency for review. After our agency reviews it and requests any China required changes we should be ready to start submitting documents to the secretary of State. I am hopeful that possibly Friday we will be able to take our documents to our Secretary of State, but I realize that this may not happen if there are many changes that need made. We are also acutely aware that Christmas and New Years are just around the corner, which is exciting, but also involves the government agencies we need being out of the office much of the time. So, we continue to pray for patience as we remember God is in control of the timing.

We are also getting ready to send another package off to our boy. A few people from a facebook group I am in suggested the books from Hallmark that you can read the book and it records your voice. I didn't even know these books existed! And they are on sale for the holidays! So, this afternoon we headed to Hallmark and found these!

I am so excited to start this little project tonight. I think we will try each reading a page so he can hear all of our voices. He will likely not understand the stories unless there is a nanny at the orphanage who speaks some English, but I love knowing that he will hear us read to him even when we can't be there. We will probably send him the Rudolph book in this package and then the Goodnight Moon book in the next package. And just a side note, I read Goodnight Moon to all of my kids as babies--so you can imagine when I saw it sitting on the shelf that I had a little moment of thankfulness that I can "read" it to our little guy even though we are halfway across the world.

We also found this little helicopter to put in his package-I sent him a stuffed animal in the last package-but have since learned that most orphanages do not let the children have any stuffed animals because they cannot disinfect them.
I remember Titus playing with these toys when he was about Z's age, so we are hopeful it will be something new for him to play with that the orphanage will let him have since they can easily wipe it down.

The last couple of weeks also seem to have brought alternating emotions of excitement and frustration.  The rules and paperwork are set in place for a reason by the government for safety of all involved, but it is frustrating knowing our boy is growing up a little more every day without a family.

Thank you again for your continued love and prayers. It has been so encouraging to know people are praying for our guy and for us-so please continue! Specifically please pray that we are able to start the sealing process (the process where the dossier goes through the different government agencies to be stamped with approval) and for this process to go quickly, pray for our boy to have someone who is loving on him and explaining to him that he has a family waiting on him, pray that we have patience as this all progresses. As always, we are grateful for you all.