Wonderful News

Yesterday afternoon we received a wonderful piece of information!!!!!!!!!!

     Praise the Lord!! TA stands for our travel approval.  We now have the permission to travel to get Maddison!  For the next step, we are waiting for an American consulate appointment date.   How that works is .....  CCAI suggests a few dates and we decide on 5 choices that will work with our schedule.  I will let Dave explain all the rest later.  I just know we are really, really going!!!!!! YEA!!!!!

      My prayer:  Thank you Lord for your hand of direction, guidance, and patience.  It has been hard at times and yet so worth the wait.  "You are my God, and I will give you thanks; you are my God and I will exalt you." (Psalm 119:28)  "For you make me glad by your deeds, O Lord; I sing for joy at the works of your hands.  How great are your works, O Lord, how profound are your thoughts!" (Psalm 92:4-5)  Amen.  

~Robin

Notification from Our Adoption Agency

We received the following email from our Adoption Agency late this afternoon.

Wonderful news! We wanted to take the chance to send you a quick note before the weekend to let you know that based on the date that your documents were turned into the CCCWA, we believe a travel approval for your family will arrive in our hands shortly!  Although we are not sure on the exact date we will receive travel approvals, we are hopeful to receive them next week.  We are very excited for your family as you are one step closer to traveling to China for your little one!  Upon receiving travel approvals we will request a Consulate appointment for your family.  Once travel approvals arrive, we will email you as soon as we have them in hand.  We are contacting you today in hopes to be able to request consulate appointments as quickly as possible once the travel approvals arrive.

Potential travel dates were included as well.

Option 1

Leave around August 8-10 and return somewhere around August 24-25.**

**Leaving August 8 will include a 3 night/2 day tour in Beijing. If you would like to opt out of the tour you can potentially leave as late as August 10th 

Option 2

Leave around August 15-17 and return somewhere around August 31- September 1.**

**Leaving August 15^th will include a 3 night/2 day tour in Beijing. If you would like to opt out of the tour you can potentially leave as late as August 17th. 

Not quite sure how option 1 will work since we haven't received our travel approval yet.  We'll have to talk with our agency about potential options and see what transpires next week.  It is hard to believe, we will be traveling shortly to get Maddison! 
~ Dave

I could not let this moment go by without adding my thoughts.  We were in Walmart when we got this e-mail, standing in front of diaper rash cream and baby lotion, and all I could do was cry.  I made it out of the store with the diaper rash cream and totally forgot the baby lotion.  Oh,well.   On a more put together note, I just wanted to add a verse. 

 "Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!" 

 II Corinthians 9:15 

~ Robin

 
 

Robin's Birthday and Updated Video of Maddison

Today is Robin's birthday!  I won't say how old, but today was made special from our friends in Canada.  Gwen sent us a video of Maddison when she visited her at the Hebi City SWI in China a few weeks ago after they had picked up their son Pierre-Luc.  Robin awoke to find a video and pictures from Gwen!  She says this is the best birthday present ever!!!!!  Gwen mentioned that the people from the orphanage said that Maddison, Pierre-Luc, and Wen Shin (the other little girl in the video) are best friends. It will be so nice that we can keep at least 2 of the 3 in contact with each.  Now if we could only find out about Wen Shin's forever family........

Article 5

Today we were notified that our agency has picked up our Article 5 from the consulate in Guangzhou! Here is the email we received:

"We just received an update from our Guangzhou staff stating that they have picked up your family’s Article 5(s) (signed 2^nd acceptance letter) from the Consulate and now it is off to the CCCWA.  The Article 5 typically takes about 2-3 days to be delivered to the CCCWA. Once the CCCWA receives this document, they will have all that they need to issue your family’s travel approval.  The CCCWA typically takes about 2-4 weeks to issue a travel approval.  Once the travel approval arrives families typically leave for China about 10-21 days later.  We see this update as great news for your family as you are one step closer to getting you to your little one in China! "

So here's the list from a previous post that I promised I'd update.....

• Receive LOA (DONE!)
• Send I-800 application to USCIS (asking US immigration for permission to adopt the child we were specifically matched with)  (DONE!)
• USCIS forwards our approval to the National Visa Center (NVC) to petition visa (DONE!)
• The NVC forwards the approved visa petition to the US Consulate in Guangzhou China  (DONE!)
• The Consulate reviews the visa application (the DS-230), makes sure it meets the qualifications for an immigrant visa, and then signs off that everything is in order for the adoption to be completed. (DONE!)
• The approval is forwarded to the CCCWA, which issues our Travel Approval (TA)!

Getting closer!!!!

We got our VISAs!

Today we received our Visas from the Chinese Consulate in Washington DC.  Thanks goes to the Assistant Stork for handling our applications! They did a fantastic job for us as always.  We are one step closer to traveling.