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We have found ourselves on this really long journey of hurry up and wait for a year. Actually it has been a year exactly from today. Tomorrow is the year anniversary of when we saw our precious son's face for the first time, the first time I can honestly say I got to experience a Love at first sight that I never even imagined possible, and the first time an orphan really became a son in our pursuit of adoption. 1 year ago tomorrow, we feel in love with this boy, instead of being in love with the obedience of caring for the orphan, or the mission of helping an orphan.
Starting Wednesday of last week, I called our adoption agency to find out where our dossier was in the process of getting approved. It had been logged in for over 65 days, and we were feeling rather anxious, and frustrated that we still hadn't heard anything back. I nicely explained to our referral consultant that if we had any chance of being in country for his Birthday on April 21st, we really needed to get our confirmation (as typical travel time from confirmation to travel is 3 months.) She was super nice, and let us know she would call their China office to see if they could do anything for us.
I found myself really kind of crushed at the prospect of missing the date that has been in my mind from the start of having him be with us by the 21st of April. I was feeling discouraged, and just kind of helpless and broken. We had been praying for a quite approval, and it just seemed like the Lord wasn't granting it.
After Wednesday, I really started to cry out to the Lord begging him to help China push through our paperwork. I had Noah asking the Lord for approval as well.
Today we got the amazing news that our letter "seeking confirmation" also known as an LSC was received at our Agency. This is a huge step. This basically means that China has approved our paperwork, and he is ours (granted we still have more paperwork, but they have approved our dossier, and he will now know we exist!)
We are seriously rejoicing this evening. This is such a relief, as we were starting to think something was wrong and they weren't going to approve us. We are so so excited that we will hopefully get to meet him in less than 3 months.
We need some prayer....
We need our immigration paperwork to go through smoothly and quickly
We need a consulate appointment to be ASAP (all of our travel is booked backward from this date, so please pray with us one will be available quickly)
We still need $10,000 to complete the adoption, and we are running out of time to raise the money
We are in the process of submitting for 3 additional grants, pray that the applications go smoothly, we can get our taxes filed quickly( as we need them for the grants) and that we would be awarded something
Pray for our mandarin. it is terrible
pray for us as we really start to envision our family of 5 and prepare for all of us to travel. (we just got the boys' passports today in the mail!)
Thank you all so much for journeying with us! We are so grateful for each and everyone of you!!!
