I felt compelled to provide an update on our adoption progress since there have been some exciting developments in the past couple of months.

We received some news recently that the girl that we are attempting to be matched with had had her paperwork escalated quicker than we had anticipated. To be honest I’m not exactly sure of the process in China, but what that meant to us is that she would now be one step closer to our agency losing exclusivity and being made available to other agencies working in China. We had to step up our game!

This inspired us to reach two noteworthy milestones in the process, probably a little bit quicker than we had planned.

First, we have completed all of our paperwork. Our dossier is in the process of being submitted with (to our knowledge) one final document pending approval – our immigration paperwork. Once that has been approved, our dossier will go the The State Department for review and then on to The Chinese Consulate in Chicago for translation before it goes on to China to be submitted.

Second, we were able to complete and submit our application for the grant with Sacred Selections. Our understanding is that the application will now be reviewed by several members of the board. Once it is (Lord willing) approved, we will be involved with a, or a series of, fund raiser(s). We hope to personally be involved with these events, depending on their locations.

There were several people involved with providing references to Sacred Selections for the grant application. I cannot express in words how special these references were to us. It is truly a blessing to have such wonderful people in our lives willing to help us out.

The costs have already started to mount. Each step of the process has some kind of associated fee tied to it, ranging anywhere from several hundreds to a few thousand dollars. Pending the approval of the financial grant, we took out a mortgage on the house to pay the fees in order to keep the process moving along. This provided some much needed breathing room. Thank you to PNC Bank for pushing it through so quickly.

Our friends from Tennessee who adopted two little girls from China just completed their overseas trip and are now safely back in the states and about to be reunited with the rest of their family (they may even be back home at this point). It’s been very touching to read their posts about how they are spending their time and bonding with their new daughters. I know that it has made me all the more anxious for this process to be over so that we can be in their shoes.

I suppose that’s it for now. We’ve never been through this process before, but I have the feeling that we may be in for a wild ride coming up – as if so far we’ve been riding up the big chain-lifted hill on a roller coaster and we’re about to come over the crest. Time will tell I suppose.

A big THANK YOU to everyone who has supported us so far!