Waiting for That Last Piece of Paper

Tom and I made the 5-hour trip to Jacksonville on Wednesday afternoon, leaving Anna and Jared to be picked up from school by the Haynes family, taken to AWANA at church, dropped off with the Mignaccas to spend the night (on a school night--how exciting!), then picked up from school by the Mignaccas, and taken to swim team practice by the Garrants. Whew!! Oh, yeah, and we almost forgot to ask the Mignaccas to look after Tad, too.

So off we went, an overnight trip to lovely riverside and oceanside Jacksonville for an evening. We spent the night in the Omni Hotel near the River Walk, had a *very* late dinner at the American Cafe at Jackson Landing by the river (reminiscent of one of our first "dates" at the American Cafe at the Inner Harbor of Baltimore), had Starbucks for breakfast, and off we went to the tightly secured US Citizenship and Immigration Services office Thursday morning.

The fingerprinting itself was quick and painless...10 hours of driving for about 10 minutes of printing. But it's done. We actually ran into one of Tom's patients from Turkey applying for citizenship for his Turkish wife--what a small world!

So now we wait for that last piece of paper--our approval from USCIS to adopt from overseas. Once we have that, we'll face a brief furry of activity as we route the dossier through the various levels of certification, authentication, and critical review, before it is sent to China. Then, the hardest part of the wait will begin--the wait for a child referral and match.

As we wait, we have much to do at home--house projects, kids' activities, ministry, work, etc. So we are making the most of this time of waiting by keeping ourselves beyond busy with the many things on our plates. Life is good; God is good. And we are blessed to know that in God's timing we'll have a new daughter (whom we already love) in our home.

Invitation to be Fingerprinted

Our invitation from the USCIS to go to Jacksonville (5 hours away!) to have our fingerprints taken has finally arrived in the mail! Yay! This is something we have been waiting for for a few weeks. We hope to drive out there mid-week next week to get them taken, which will allow the USCIS to finish processing our I-171H, the final piece of paper we need to be approved for international adoption. Again, baby steps, but forward progress all the same!

I had been feeling a little discouraged about timing last week, as it seemed our invitation from USCIS would never arrive, and as we learned about some changes in the way the CCAA, China's government agency in charge of adoptions, handles the "match" process for "waiting children." The "match" is when they look over your dossier and decide which orphan is best suited for your family. A "waiting child" is a child with special medical needs of some sort, which are harder to place for adoption. We are open to a waiting child--and had to submit a checklist indicating which medical needs we were open to considering. The new matching process could make it a longer wait time for our match, and, more importantly, it might mean that when we receive a child's profile for consideration, we'll have less than 24 hours to review it and make a decision.

I hate the thought of not accepting *any* child, but I am comfortable with the conditions we indicated we would be open to, and I am SO thankful for Tom's medical knowledge which will make it easier for us than for most to make such a hasty decision when the time comes.

I am still resting in God's sovereignty over the timing of this process. I'm realizing that, if we end up not going to China until later this year, it could mean the kids' Thanksgiving or Christmas breaks coincide with the trip, making it easier for them to come along. They REALLY want to come, and Tom and I are thinking through whether that is a good idea, or whether it would be better to leave them at home with--perhaps?--some willing grandparents? Or maybe, if we decide they should come, we might have some grandparents eager to take a trip to China as well? Praying for wisdom, and I've asked some families who recently returned from China for their thoughts on this issue. One family took their older daughter, and one family left their two older boys at home with grandparents.

I'm glad we're still making some forward progress, even if the steps seem so very small! And I'm still praying for our little girl, wherever she is and whoever she is, that she would be receiving good care as she waits, that she would have caregivers who are warm and loving.

We recently re-arranged Anna's closet a bit and moved some of our "little girl" toys into what is currently our "spare room," most likely soon to become the "baby's room." I hope to start painting and getting the room more ready...and want to enlist Anna's help in this process so she will feel a sense of pride and ownership for her new sister's room.

Starting to feel more real

Now that the home study is complete and we are only waiting for one more piece of paper to complete our dossier, our pursuit of our new daughter is feeling less like a dream and more like it will soon be reality. Reading the blogs listed in my links below has made it even more so--these two families that I have never met are RIGHT NOW in China with their new babies, getting to know them. They were permitted to travel to the orphanage that their babies came from, which is somewhat unusual apparently. Today, seeing photos of the orphanage where these families received their babies, and seeing photos of the site where one of the babies had been found abandoned at birth, tugged at my heart. So many children in so many cribs pushed so close together! Their blog described a 5-year-old girl with cardiac issues that is waiting to be matched with a family and it made me want to go and bring her home today! Even if she is several years older than we had planned on adopting!

I have to keep reminding myself that God, who is sovereign over all things and over the timing of all things, has already selected our daughter, and has already selected our family for her. He already knows her name, her personality, her medical condition, her needs, her heart. He already knows how she will impact our family and our lives. He already knows how we will nurture and mold and shape her. So I pray for her that He would help her to wait, even as he helps us to wait. And that He would provide loving caregivers, good medical care, physical nourishment, emotional nurture, and mental stimulation.

One piece of paper closer

Our home study arrived in the mail yesterday! Yay! Now we await a fingerprinting appointment with the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the final piece of paper for our dossier, the I-171H, which gives us clearance from USCIS to adopt internationally. It feels like itty bitty baby steps, but it is forward progress nonetheless!