*Fun Mail

Guess what I found in our mailbox today.....Our immigration approval already! And, now it is noted on the bottom that a cable was sent to Guangzhou, China. It's official! We really only had to renew our previous approval, as well as do a change of status from Vietnam to China, so that is why it happened so quickly.

Since we sent in most of our paperwork to the agency on Monday, all we are waiting on now is Keith's Birth Certificate and our medical exams. Keith saw the doctor today, and will see mine on January 7th. Then we await blood test results, and signatures, and our part should be done by mid January. We're making progress!

*Here's the News....

Alright, so now I have a few minutes to write and wanted to let you know that we are moving forward with China. We are very excited about. For the first time in a long time, things actually seem to be moving forward MORE QUICKLY than we expected. Because we had just updated our home study for Vietnam, our social worker was able to surprise us by having our China home study done in two days!! We expected this to take at least a month, not really knowing that it didn't require all new paperwork. That was a huge praise!

We are going the special needs route with the China program through our agency, Faith International. This route works much different than the route for healthy children, where the wait is as long as 3 years now. Our whole process from now until we have the child home could be 9 months, or even less since our paperwork stage is progressing quickly.

We have done some research on what kinds of special needs we are open to. We are using the term "minor correctable special needs" in our paperwork, and can be more specific with our agency. They will then help us find the right child for us based on the age and special needs we have requested. The most common special needs that we are open to are cleft palate/lip, minor physical deformities like missing or extra digits..., sight or hearing weakness, skin conditions, minor heart conditions, Hepatitis B.....We are still requesting a girl, under the age of 2.

Our immigration forms are being sent to the US Consulate today. It is perfect timing because our Vietnam approval expires soon and we were needing to update our forms anyway. Anyone can have one free update and one free change of status, and you can do both at once. So, we are updating and changing our status to China, and will wait a few weeks for approval. Once we have our immigration approval, and all of our paperwork done, our dossier goes to China and our agency will start looking on the special needs lists for our child! Most of the paperwork we have done before. The most time consuming are things we need other people to help with - our medical reports, and employment letters..... The stress of paperwork is adding to the busyness of the season, but it's a good stress.

The Lord has given us peace about this, and is open doors along the way. Now we need Him to provide the funds, and help us find our daughter.

We are not giving up on Vietnam. If things open again soon, we may have to delay our Vietnam adoption, until our first daughter is home and adjusted. It would also be an even bigger financial stretch to do two adoptions, but if this is what the Lord has for us, He will provide. Liv is still in Vietnam, and I won't give up looking for her until the Lord tells me to.

We need a nickname for our Chinese daughter, and may have to start a new blog, since this one is obviously rather Vietnamese. Some nicknames we have brainstormed are: Pearl, LIA (Love in Asia - LIC just isn't cute, and LICh is worse:) and Mei Mei (which means little sister in Mandarin). Any other suggestions, or votes?

It is so great to see an end to this long wait for our next child in site! I have hope, and am also trying to guard my hope for fear of trials like we've had with Vietnam.

*New I 171H

We received our updated I -171H form in the mail today from getting re fingerprinted last week.

*America's Most Wanted?

Today we successfully got our fingerprints (we have to wait and see if we are on the "Most Wanted" list). The effort began yesterday, as Keith drove to Tacoma to get our home study because it hadn’t come in the mail in time (we needed it to do our immigration paperwork). Then we dropped Koen off at Grandma’s and headed to Ellensburg. We stayed with friends there and enjoyed a night of card playing and popcorn eating. Then this morning we got up early to be in Yakima at the USCIS (Immigration Service) office when it opened. We thought it opened at 9, but when we got there at 8:50, they were letting people in. Apparently they open at 8am. I’m glad we didn’t get up earlier though because we were number 4 – the 4th people they’d seen that morning. There was no wait! We planned to be there for several hours and brought reading material and everything, and were only there for 25 minutes! The staff it was rare to have so few people waiting.
This is Keith and our social worker at Faith International Adoptions - with pictures of many of the kids that have been adopted through the agency on the wall.

So, why Yakima? Not real sure, but we were told that if we went to Yakima ourselves and turned in our I600-A (an application to the US government to adopt a child) in person, and waited to see if there were any openings to get fingerprinted, that it would save us about 3 weeks out of the 8-10 week process for the approval. For more detailed info, see below.

After we were done, we decided to take advantage of the babysitting and headed to Ihop for breakfast. Then, back to Ellensburg and on home. Koen did well while we were gone. Grandma said that at one point this morning he was saying “mommy” and “papa” and roaming around looking for us, but wasn’t acting sad that he didn’t find us. Not sure if that’s good or bad.

So, now that this step is done, we have about a 7 week wait to get immigration approval, and then our dossier (packet of adoption paperwork, like a portfolio) will be complete (we have 2 more papers to finish up, but can do that now), and will be authenticated, translated, and sent to Vietnam (hopefully in early October?), and we begin the long wait for a referral (the assignment of our child, with picture and medical info).

When we met with our agency’s director several months ago, he was expecting that our wait wouldn’t be very long because they had opened a new orphanage in northern Vietnam that was sending our agency all of their children for adoption, and were moving things along quickly. Our director expected the waiting list at the agency to be very short by the time we joined it. However, we got a newsletter from the agency today that the families that got their children this month waited an average of 10-12 months for a girl, and 7-9 for a boy. I’m assuming that means there is still a pretty good size waiting list, and that ours will likely take at least 10 months from October, but we’ll see. I guess I should expect a long wait, so I might be pleasantly surprised if it’s shorter. Another problem with a 10-12 month wait though, is that it means we will travel in the summer, when the weather is very hot and humid (I’ve read it can feel like 119F!!!) Oh well, God knows!

The USCIS office in Washington state - nothing extravagant.

For those of you who will adopt and go through the Immigration/Fingerprinting someday, here are more details:

At the door there is a guard who will take a form of photo ID (take passports) and your cell phones and anything else you’re carrying and you’ll go through security (like at the airport). You can’t take backpacks in, but a purse was fine. You can’t have a cell phone on in the building (also like flying). The guard gives you a number and there is a waiting room with about 40 chairs and a few toys for kids (best to get babysitting). We only had to wait a minute really and we went to turn in our forms, completed home study, copies of birth and marriage certificates, and paid the bill (prices went up recently). Then we turned in a form to the fingerprinting counter on the other side of the room, waited maybe 5 minutes while Martha Stewart played on a TV screen in the room, and were called back to be printed.

Fingerprinting isn’t messy like it used to be. It’s all digital. The staff will do a print of each thumb, and then the other 4 fingers on your hand together, then each finger individually, rolling them side to side. When done, they give you a receipt (that I’m told is important to keep). It probably took 5 minutes total. I’ve heard that staff at the USCIS offices are usually stern and impersonal, but Washington’s were very nice and friendly. It was really all quite painless! But, again, the staff told us that it is usually much busier, especially in the mornings.