Still Waiting.....

Just giving you a quick update that there is nothing to update. :-)

Actually, God continues to confirm for me that His timing is perfect. Our dossier (as far as I know) is still being authenticated in Houston. It was mailed off several weeks ago. Once it's done it will be mailed off to China and we'll wait for a log-in-date. If I had hand-carried it in as planned, our dossier would already be in the reviewing room in China by now.

I was brooding about this to a friend yesterday, telling her that I am confident in God's timing, just still a little sad that it's taking so long. A few hours later, I received an email from our agency with some time frames for how long China is taking to process dossiers. They are happening as quickly as 10 weeks now. The average time is anywhere from 12-17 weeks, so China is really moving fast. This being said, if our dossier had been submitted to China when I wanted it to, we probably would have been traveling in August to pick up Max. Plane tickets to China at that time are UNREAL! They are so expensive. God has already provided for our finances in miraculous ways. I believe with all my heart that we would not have been able to afford to take the girls with us to pick Max up if we had received approval to travel in August. We feel very strongly that the girls should go with us, so in my humble heart, I believe this is why everything is being held up....that way we will be traveling well after the Olympics, and airline tickets will go back down.

Even when in our heads we know that God is in control, it sometimes takes longer for our hearts to catch up.

Please Pray

Please, please pray for Steven Curtis Chapman and his family. Steven is a Christian recording artist who has advocated heavily for international adoption. He and his wife have 6 children, 3 of whom were adopted from China. Yesterday afternoon, their youngest child (a little 5 year old girl adopted from China) was tragically killed in their driveway, when she was accidentally hit by an SUV. I cannot even imagine how their family is feeling. I implore you to pray for them. Steven and his wife are solid believers-but that doesn't mean they're not hurting right now. Their daughter's name is Maria. Steven's wife's name is Mary Beth. To learn more about the Chapman family, visit their website.

www.stevencurtischapman.com/

Change of Plans

I drove down to Austin last Monday, with the intention of getting our dossier state certified, then heading to Houston early the next morning. But things didn't exactly work out like I had planned. This is not always easy for me to handle, especially when it comes to my children.

I found the Secretary of State office with no problems. I walked in and found myself to be the only person in the office, so I didn't even have to wait in line. The state certification process started and I was feeling pretty good about the whole thing....until the woman doing the work mentioned, "Did you know that you are missing a notary stamp on your husband's physical?" My jaw dropped. NO! Of COURSE I did not know that the stamp was missing. I would never have driven all the way down there knowing that something as vital as the notary stamp was missing off of a document. I wanted to cry (I won't lie, I did shed a few tears). But the woman was so nice. Because my physical from our doctor had been notarized correctly she went ahead and state certified the other one, after extracting from me a promise that as soon as I returned home I would get the stamp.

Yeah!! But then I asked the question that began the shift in my plans. "Do you think the Chinese consulate will authenticate the document without the notary stamp?"

Silence.........

I could tell by the look on her face that the answer was not going to be one that I liked.

"Technically, I wasn't even supposed to state certify it, but you never know, they might."

Well, not the most comforting answer, but at least it was a truthful answer. We finished up, I thanked her for her help and headed down to the lobby to figure out what to do. I had two choices. Go home and get the missing notary stamp, or go to Houston and hope for the best. I finally decided I was going to go for it. I would plead my case with the consulate and hope that they would mercifully authenticate our dossier so that we could get it sent to China.

I headed to my friend's house. We talked, I vented my frustration and then I went to make copies of our dossier in anticipation of leaving early in the morning for Houston. While making copies, I came across a mistake that the secretary of state had made while certifying our home study. She had certified that wrong notary, a notary whose commission had expired. That meant that China would reject that document when it arrived there.

"Houston, we have a problem." I would have to go back to the Secretary of State the next morning to get the document fixed before I could go to the Chinese consulate in Houston. However, I had to be there by 11 am to get our dossier authenticated that same day. Wasn't going to happen. The Secretary of State didn't even open until 8 am, there was no way I could then make it to Houston in time.

I spent the night there in Austin with Stephanie, got our document done correctly the next morning, then headed back to Arlington. I was heartbroken. It had become QUITE apparent that God did not want me going to Houston to get the dossier authenticated, but I struggled. I had worked out a whole plan of getting our dossier to China as fast as humanly possible, but God was saying, "Slow down." I didn't understand why. We so badly want to get Max as soon as possible, why had so many things gone wrong with our dossier. It took 90 days to get our Homeland Security Approval rather than the normal 60. Our dossier was missing an important stamp. Our home study had been certified incorrectly. Why?

I don't claim to understand why God makes things, or allows things to happen. But a week later I can look back at this and trust that He is in control. Perhaps we needed to get our dossier in later so that we didn't get approval to travel in the summer when plane tickets would have doubled in price. Perhaps..I honestly don't know. But I do know that at least He knows what He's doing. Thank goodness for that. I take comfort in His timing.

Jeremiah 29:11 "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

Road Trip

I am heading down to Austin on Monday to get all of our dossier documents state certified. I will then spend the night with one of my favorite people, my best friend from college, Stephanie Groutas. GO OBU!!!! The next morning I will get up much earlier than I would actually like to (all for Max!) and go to Houston to the Chinese consulate. They will authenticate all of the dossier and it will be ready to be mailed to our adoption agency. From there, it will be translated into Chinese, then hand carried into the CCAA. Then we wait for our log in date and start the countdown. The average time for a dossier to be processed and approved is 12-17 weeks. Then we will receive a letter asking if we still intend to go through with the adoption (hello, would we be doing all this if we weren't????). We then send back our letter of confirmation, that yes indeedy, we want our son. We then receive our travel approval to go to China to bring Max home. We are speculating that we will be traveling to China sometime in October, but even as early as late September if everything moves quickly. We are so ready to be there!

It's About Time

After my last post, I decided that I needed to start making phone calls to make something happen with our U.S. approval that we had been waiting for. I emailed the office in charge of processing our application, with no response once again. I then called the woman who did our home study. She contacted the Oklahoma office (who emailed her back within hours) to ask them to look into it. They did-they emailed the Dallas office who in turned emailed my home study provider, asking, "What can we do to help?" Well she told them exactly what they could do to help and I received an email that very afternoon saying that our application had been approved and our approval letter would arrive shortly. We began making plans for the next step, thinking that the letter would arrive sometime this week. In fact, no, it arrived 2 days after I received the email telling us we were approved. SO-we scrambled to get everything together to get our paperwork ready for state certification and authentication.....more on that in the next post. But Hallelujah!!!!! Our approval is in and we can get the finishing touches on our dossier and get it to China. For me, that will be a huge burden off of my shoulders. I have been working on our dossier since January-so to finally know that China has it and it is out of my hands will be a big relief.