seeing faces

We are entering a new phase in our adoption. We are finally able to see faces! There are two ways we may meet our little boy. One way is being matched or referred after completing our dossier and having it accepted in China. We are still a few months out from this point. The other option is finding a child on the list of children who have yet to be matched with a family and have been on this list for over 30 days. Our agency would only "lock-in" a child like this to a family who almost has their dossier completed. After discussing things with our caseworker and reviewing our progress, it seems that we have reached that point! Crazily, this opens the door for us to find a child at any time. Typically the children who stay on this list for over 30 days generally have a more of a need that we currently feel comfortable with, however there are periodically kids who could potentially be a good fit for our family. Our caseworker sent a few profiles of kids on the list, or had been recently matched, just so that we could see what type of information we would be receiving. While the 3 kids were not a good fit for our family for a variety of reasons, it was so neat to see the pictures and hear the stories. The information included things like how they came to the orphanage (where they were found), blood work reports and measurements, specifics on their special need, even what types of toys they liked and what they ate. It truly made this adoption feel more real. We also talked about our projected timeline. Our caseworker gave us a travel estimate of February or March, regardless of when we are matched (either soon, or not long after our dossier is completed). All this is so encouraging to us and much more exciting than the paperwork chase. While it could easily be a few more months before we see pictures of the little guy, it is amazing to know there is potential for it to be any day!

I-800A

Hopefully today we will cross a marker in our adoption. Our I-800A (paperwork that will give us clearance from the US Government to adopt an orphan from another country) will arrive in Texas to start the approval process. This paperwork was very specific and picky. If our I-800A gets the OK from the Department of Security, we will then get a date and location where we go to get fingerprinted. This portion of the process is time sensitive and a big deal. In fact, when one of our nieces was adopted from Ethiopia, they had trouble getting her out of the country because there was a snag with their fingerprinting. All that to say, please pray that this process goes smoothly with the details as they check the paperwork that we sent, as well as prepare any paperwork to be sent along to China.

Thanks so much!