For those of you who do not remember, this is the next step in our road to bringing Li Rose home! We sent our dossier to China on July 29, and it was officially logged in on August 1 (our log in date, or LID). After the LID, we had to wait for the dossier to be translated, and then to be approved by the Chinese government. Official approval to adopt Li Rose is given in the form of a letter of acceptance (or LOA)! So we have been officially approved to adopt Li Rose!!!! We were told on our LID that it takes an average of 2.5 months from LID to LOA, and we have been seeing on a list-serve that we are part of that some families have waited well over 100 days (158 was the most we have seen). We received our LOA after just 51 days! PRAISE THE LORD!!! (Can you tell we are excited?)
We are now on a new paper chase. We have to fill out a new USCIS application. The first one we filled out was for generic approval from the federal government to adopt a child from China. That approval became part of our dossier. This next form will be to get approval from the federal government to specifically adopt Li Rose! Fortunately this process only takes a few weeks (as opposed to a few months the first time), but it is the most time consuming part of our next portion of work, so we are moving as fast as we can to get all the documentation together and get our USCIS application in the mail!
There are some other things that go on, with the Chinese government sending stuff to the US government, then the US government responding (it is all confusing). But our next momentous achievement will be to be granted TA (or travel authorization) from the Chinese government. We could leave as soon as two weeks after that, depending on how quickly we can get an appointment at the office in Kunming City in China. The average time between LOA and TA is about 2 months, which means that we may be traveling to China by the end of November or early December!!!! We can hardly contain our excitement, and cannot hardly wait until the day when we can go get our little Li Rose and bring her home!
Please continue to pray for the following:
- Li Rose is kept in a living environment that is loving, and that she has someone that she can trust, attach to, and love until we can come get her.
- That the orphanage gives Li Rose the care package that we sent her, or at least the photo album in the care package, and that someone will sit with her each day and show her who her mommy, daddy, and big brother are.
- That all the paperwork can go through the respective agencies just as soon as possible and that we can leave to get Li Rose as soon as we can.
- That we stay sane as we wait for the each of the next small steps to be completed until we can bring our daughter home.
