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.