More Precious Than Gold

This is our Letter Seeking Confirmation (LSC). Yes, this piece of paper a little over 8.5 X 11 is what we have been waiting for. It came on October 1st just after 1pm. The funny thing is that I had been working on my computer in the living room all day waiting for the Fed-Ex delivery person. I had my camera sitting on the table by the front door all ready to take a picture of the "stork"  with the package as I had seen many families post pictures of the envelope and delivery guy. I thought this would be a great idea. So here I was waiting and waiting. I jumped at every sound of a car and ran to the front window...but no, not the truck. Until........ I was sitting there eating lunch and heard what sounded like the storm door opening. I literally, threw my plate on the couch (oops-but who cares about the mess at this point), ran to the door grabbing the camera as I am opening it AND........the package is already laying on the dusty Lubbock ground and the Fed-Ex truck is headed down the street. I mean, I RAN to the door to get this picture and he was already hauling it down the street- and THE STORK THREW MY BABY ON THE PORCH, IN THE DIRT!! Didn't he know what was in that package:) So much for my Kodak moment:) I did however, get a great picture of the truck speeding away and a funny story to tell Lillie when she is older. I then proceeded to check on all the paperwork for USCIS (US gov't.) and the DS230 (Dept. of State-Visa application for Lillie) and even having checked over and over again over the past 115 days, I found some mistakes. We fixed them and then signed all the documents and we were off to Fed-Ex to get them to the agency and the US gov't. So now we are in to the next wait. The USCIS agency received their package on Friday at around 1pm and our agency received the LSC and other documents yesterday. They will be sending those documents back to China on Friday. What I am shocked about is how quickly we got that important LSC signed and back in the mail. I am not sure we even had it for 3 hours before it was headed back to China via our agency. We couldn't be more sure about adopting this beautiful girl and can't wait to travel!  So what happens next you ask.....We wait for the final approval (I-800) from the USCIS. They will then send us via email and snail mail, the approval document. We then forward our approval to our agency and they send it to China. The USCIS will also send all of our documentation to the NVC or National Visa Center to review and scan the documents which will then be emailed to the US Consulate in Guangzhou.  Once Guangzhou receives those documents and the second LSC which is sent to them from the Chinese gov't., then they will issue what is called an Article 5. Once the Article 5 is issued, a courier picks this up and delivers it to the CCAA in Beijing where they will issue a Travel Approval (TA) for us to come to China. Once we receive this TA, our agency calls the consulate and sets up a Consulate Appt. (CA). Then we know when we travel! The average from LOA to TA for most families has run around 40-60 days. The boys were so excited to see the paperwork finally here. They have been praying (and so have we) that it would come soon. It is a relief to finally have it after such a long wait and we now know that all our paperwork was acceptable to the CCAA and they are happy to refer us our baby girl. We are now 7 days into our wait for TA. 

Psalm 118:24    This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.