LOA ***** Finally!!!

We finally have our Letter of Approval or as some call it, the Seeking Confirmation letter!! It is en route via overnight Fed Express to arrive here tomorrow. At that point I will check a little box to say "yes, we still want to adopt Yue Yuan Rong", sign it and send it back to our agency overnight Fed Ex. Then it will wing its way to China. We then have to wait for the "routine processing" of said letter before we can be issued our official approval to travel ..... the elusive TA. We must have our TA number before we can request a date for our Consulate Appointment (CA) and then build our trip according to the CA we are given.

How long will it take to get our TA?? Who knows! As short as 2 weeks or as long as ..... well considering what we have just endured I can't even venture a guess at that! Can we travel before our visas expire on January 18th? Only by a miracle of God - I know He is capable of that, but will leave it to His timing and ultimate Will. If we can't travel by Jan 18, we will be postponed for a month and not be able to travel until mid February ..... Chinese New Year is a big celebration in China and offices are closed for 2wks in early February this year.

Here's hoping for a quick and speedy delivery of our TA!

Mary

Very sad news

All of our agency's families that were logged into the CCAA in early September - most which were held for 1-4 weeks since arriving in China - somehow got caught in a computer error/snafu. We were all eagerly waiting yesterday as we read about LOAs coming in on other sites - some with LIDs later than all of ours. After waiting all day for some good "news" we found out about the computer glitch late last night. The CCAA had not so much as notified our agency that there was a problem and now they are waiting for our agency's Chinese liason to arrive the end of next week to "straighten things out". THEN to add even more insult to our already injured hearts, our agency received a package of LOA's this morning - for families logged in at the END of Sept into the middle of October!! They totally just skipped us and are going to wait until next week to have things corrected. My heart is so very heavy. We do not have the hope to travel now until the end of February - since China shuts down for 10 days for the Chinese New Year which is on Feb 7 this year. Some of the families who received their LOAs today had their dossiers go to China 2 months after ours arrived.

Life is not fair - wear a helmet! I have heard repeatedly - but it doesn't hurt my head nearly so much as my heart - injustice is so hard to handle.

On top of this bad news day, we lost our dear Maggie - 17 mth old Golden Retriever this morning. She was born with a congenital heart issue and had a progressively worsening murmur. She went into pulmonary edema last night and labored well into late this morning. The vet arrived close to 11am to ease her into the great doggie beyond. We will surely miss her and how she loved to run and fetch; to jump into the lake and bark at the geese; and of course how she unmercifully loved to chew on our kitty cats and chase them through the house.

We have nothing to hear on the China front now for at least a week. It will be a long, quiet week. We will try to focus on Christmas preparations and pray that Jeremy will not lie in his bed and wonder sadly why his Mama and Baba are taking so very long to come and take him home to his family.

Mary

Century Club

The Century Club is a club you NEVER want to join. It means you have been waiting for 100 or more days from you LID - waiting for the Letter of Acceptance or Seeking Confirmation letter. This letter is new in the process since our last adoption in 2006 - it is part of the Hague Treaty for international adoption compliance. It in essence asks the parents if they "truly want to adopt said child" that they have been waiting and waiting and waiting to go and pick up?! Well, OF COURSE we still want to adopt him!! It now precedes the TA (travel approval) by 2-4 weeks. But it is a necessary piece of red tape that prolongs the process yet another 3-4weeks. We still have yet to receive it. Add to the 101 days since our LID - we had our dossier actually sent to China on 7/29/07 but it was unfortunately not logged in until 9/3/07 - an additional 36 days to our waiting time. So we have officially been waiting 137 days since our dossier went to China. With all of our prior 3 adoptions from China, we never were more than 87 days from LID. We now have great concern that we will get to China before our visas expire on January 18th. That will cost us several more hundred dollars to redo. We are not in this waiting alone, though - all of us who were logged in during September are still waiting - and most of us were logged in late, too.

I truly know that God is in control - it is my weak nature that is so impatient. Just this morning I was pondering just how long the Jewish nation waited for the Messiah to come. 400 years without a word from God! Now that was a long wait!! But they still held out hope and watched and waited. And at just the right time God sent His Son as a baby born in a stable to a normal, everyday Jewish couple.

The day will arrive when we will get to go and pick up our dear son, Jeremy. And, yes, we might have to spend hundreds of dollars more to get new visas, too. But the pain of this loooong labor will pale as we have the rest of our lives to enjoy him and watch him grow.

Sure would appreciate any prayers for this way belated LOA, though! :-)

Mary