More pictures

If you click on the photos, you can see a bigger version of them. :-)

Immigration Approval AND new photos!

Our I800 Provisional Approval finally arrived on 9/18. It has been sent on to China with the required information, and thus we wait again, for TA (Travel Approval). We have been told that TA is taking 6-10 weeks to get. Hopefully we're closer to the 6! It shouldn't take much longer to book flights after that.

And NEW PHOTOS from China arrived today! :-) Yan has lost at least one front tooth! He may not be able to say "Christmas" this year even if he does learn it in time ;-D. He looks happy and healthy, and that means SO much to find out after 6 months of not hearing/seeing anything. :-) I'm so thankful the orphanage did that for us!

China's written update says that his eyes are doing well (he's at high risk of glaucoma in the one eye), and that he has only had colds. He's healthy otherwise.

Yan is now 40 inches tall, and weighs 35 pounds. His foot size is confusing, so we'll just have to hope his new size 11 Sorels (extra warm boots) fit him! Since Yan is from the subtropics and sea level, he'll have quite an adjustment if he comes here right into our winter season. :-}

THANKS for all your prayers getting us all this far in the process.

LOA received

We FINALLY received the coveted and long awaited LOA (Letter of Approval) from China that officially approves of our family to go ahead and adopt Yan! Yahoo!! The letter was dated 8/17/09 and we got it 8/24/09.

With the ball back in our court, so to speak, we needed to get a copy of the LOA off to Immigration ASAP! It was a VERY frustrating week of misprinted documents, missing training certificates because we hadn't finished training, people on vacations, broken computers, internet troubles, seemingly slower snail mail than ever, etc. I didn't even want to post on this blog, I was that frustrated and depressed :-}.

But, that thick packet of information that needed to go next to Immigration was finally sent off, and we are now playing the waiting game for approval (again?) from Immigration.

Under pre-Hague law, this application for US Immigration approval would happen at the same time as our agency's seeking Travel Approval (TA) from China, I believe? No more. :-( Application for TA can't even happen until we get the approval from Immigration (not back yet) AND approval of some kind from the place in China that will finalize Yan's adoption.

The current estimate is for traveling sometime in December. At the start of this adoption journey, I would have never believed it would take over a YEAR to adopt an older, special needs, already identified child from China. Wow. I had been hoping and praying for June travel. Now we just pray it will be in 2009!

We have had no word nor pictures of any kind on Yan since mid-March (swine flu concerns stopped all forgeign visitors to the orphanage). Please continue to keep him and his caregivers in your prayers? And please pray God allows us to travel at the "right time" to go get Yan and bring him home. Thanks!

A VERY long wait

Well, we're 2 days shy of two months since having our paperwork logged in at China. I wonder how long before we hear anything?

The wait is getting harder because, while families are still being allowed to adopt after approval, thankfully, no foreigners are being allowed to visit any of the other children at the orphanage, due to swine flu concerns. :-( So we have not had any pictures or reports or even glimpses of Yan since mid-March. We think about, and pray for him and his caregivers often. Your prayers and encouragement help our long wait also :-) . Thanks!

It's interesting to speculate (and try to prepare!) for life for Yan in Montana. Someone from a coastal city warned us yesterday that Yan will very possibly get high altitude sickness when he first moves here :-O, and suffer skin-wise from our low humidity levels until he acclimates. Lots of HUGE changes in store for the little guy! PTL God has the timing already in His control! :-) And so we wait some more until we know when that is...

LID!!

We have an LID of May 25th! That won't mean anything to most of you, LOL, but that's an important date on the longggg, tedious, international adoption journey simply meaning that is the date that China officially logged our Dossier into their system and started the translation and review process. We still have little idea how long it will take to get LOA (letter of approval to come adopt him), but the next time we hear from China SHOULD be for that. Little steps forward! We have been told that the time from LID to LOA will be anywhere from 2-6 months in length. Hard to plan ahead, but we're trusting in God for the RIGHT timing.

Thanks for any and all continued prayers!

The Longgggg Wait has begun

The Long Wait for LOA (letter of approval to adopt from China) has begun. I have learned that DTC (Date to China) is actually the date our Dossier flew to China, which was 5-8-09. We're still waiting to hear that our Dossier was successfully logged in (LID). So many new terms! ;-D

So we're at day 14 in our countdown to LOA. It's hard to be enthusiastic right now since our agency says it'll be 3-6 MONTHS before we get LOA. Wow. I've seen some couples get LOA in less than 50 days, but they already had translated Dossiers sitting in China before they were matched with a child. We're doing this backwards... which is pretty typical for our family ;-D.

Our photo album for Yan flew to China 5-15-09. Please help pray it gets to him soon, and that he likes what he sees? How scarey for any little child to comprehend (or can they even?) alllll of the huge changes about to take place in their lives! And for them to have no control or say so in what's about to happen. We need to totally rely on God that this will be the best Plan for Yan, and of course for the timing of going to bring him home. :-) We're all five anxious to meet this little guy who has already captured all our hearts!

We FINALLY (we hope!) have jumped through all of the hoops, and rushed alllll of the paperwork to have a finished Dossier sitting at our agency, waiting for a final review and approval before flying off to China. Until it actually reaches China and is logged in (aka DTC), nothing can proceed in this adoption. We continue to pray for God’s Perfect Timing in all this, but it’s very hard to plow along at such a slowww rate when we’re ready to bring Yan home yesterday!



We often wonder how Yan is feeling about the speed of this adoption (and if he even fully comprehends it yet, let alone wants to be adopted by us). We get to send Yan a photo album of our family now. It turned out to be HARD to pick “just the right” photos to present ourselves as a family he might want to go live with… when our cultures are so vastly different. Even the fact that he lives in a very large factory city in the subtropics, and quite possibly has never seen the countryside, contrasts so sharply with our 10 acre farm in the mountains of southwest Montana!

The Dossier will have to go to a translation department in China, and be totally translated into Mandarin Chinese, before it can go up for review. If we are approved, we will receive a LOA (Letter of Approval), which will start more paperwork here in the US as we line up visas, final approvals, make embassy appointments in China, and make travel arrangements. I am still amazed at how many couples stick with the process! :-)