Surreal....

We began this journey in earnest 7 months ago. I still remember looking at the pile of documents that came from our adoption agency and thinking, "How will I ever get through this?" It was all so mind-boggling at the time. But, step by step, piece by piece, I've muddled through it all. It almost seems surreal that our dossier is complete. (The photo shows the result of 7 months of literal blood, sweat and tears.) I handed it all over to my friend at FedEx...we are on a first-name basis now...a couple of hours ago. It should be in Denver by 10:30 tomorrow morning (that is amazing to me).

After critical review (not once, not twice, but three times over), binding and translation into Mandarin, our dossier will be on its way to our daughter's homeland. Assuming I did everything correctly, This should happen by mid-February.

Once it arrives in China it will be reviewed by the CCAA and Logged In. The day this takes place will be our LID date (logged in date). LIDs are important because they signify when a family is queued up in line to wait for a child. People who were matched with a child in December all had a LID date from 3 1/2 years ago. Because we are on the waiting child list, it is quite possible (we are hopeful) that our LID date will be irrelevant because our adoption agency will do the matching instead of the CCAA in China. This often goes more quickly because most waiting children are considered unadoptable.

Regardless, we know that we are on God's timeline here. We know that He is in charge of revealing Grace to us. So, until His time is perfect we will wait...and update paperwork.

I began this blog with a running analogy, comparing adoption to a marathon. The first leg of this race is now complete. I can't see the finish line yet, but I know it exists and that is enough for now.

The Final Authentication!

My nice friend and the FedEx store called...yay! So, the final document is now at the Chinese Embassy for the last layer of approval. As soon as it returns we will have a complete dossier! Look for a nonsensical celebratory post in about a week :)

Love ya'll!

The Blizzard Threw a Kink in Things

On the Friday night before Christmas a blizzard hit the Maryland/DC area (and a lot of other places, too). Joel and I were planning to hand-deliver our final document to the State Department on the following Monday, just before leaving to visit our families for Christmas. We had planned on stopping at the FedEx store on the way home from DC that day to overnight the document to the Chinese Embassy for it's final authentication. Our hope was for that document to be waiting for us when we returned home on January 2.

Well...the blizzard shut down DC. So, we couldn't go. We decided to overnight the document to the State Department before leaving so that we could turn around and send it to the Embassy as soon as we got back. The problem is...the State Department has not returned it yet. I know this because my FedEx tracking number has not been activated. I know...I know...the holidays and the blizzard and weekends got in the way. So....we wait....because we can do nothing else. I guess we should get used to it. There is a lot more waiting ahead. We are so very close to having a complete dossier...so very close.

There is Light at the End of the Tunnel

The sealing process for dossier documents can be a three, four or five-step process. This depends on the state in which you live. Of course, Maryland is a five-step state. The steps are:
1)Notarization
2)County Certification (approving the notary)
3)Secretary of State Certification (approving the county clerk)
4)US State Dept. Authentication (approving the Secretary of State)
5)Chinese Embassy Authentication (approving everything)

Yesterday we made the trek into DC to get step four taken care of. I am thankful that I live within an hour of our state capital and DC. This has allowed me to hand-deliver our documents rather than mailing them. Something about entrusting these documents which I have carried around with me for three months "just in case the house burns down" to the US Postal Service is a bit disconcerting. And, let's not talk about the personal nature of what they contain!

So, step four is done and all that is left is the Chinese Embassy, which has it's own hoops to jump through. We are going to have to mail everything, because of their rules, so they will be overnighted pretty soon. Once this is done, we will just be waiting on our invitation from USCIS for fingerprinting and their approval document. Then this document will need to go through the sealing process and our dossier will actually be complete!

It could be as late as February before we receive that final document, although I hope it will come more quickly. Most adoptive families see this as the last big hurdle.

I also decided to send scans of our documents to our agency this week to check behind me and make sure that I've done everything right. I just received an approval email from our dossier consultant. I am so relieved. As careful as I have tried to be, I had this nagging feeling that I had missed something.
So, all that to say...there is light at the end of the tunnel!