Our Family Blog – Mike, Louanne, Nadia, Amelie, & Dani
WOOOOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!
We got our travel approval and our consulate appointment is booked.
We will be meeting Amelie on Valentine’s Day! Isn’t that the sweetest? So excited!
It is such a relief to have a date and we will have lots of details to follow. But first off Nadia and I made a paper chain so she can rip one off each day as we countdown. Then she also gets to X off the day on the calendar each night.
Praise God that we will be on our way to China soon to meet our sweet girl.
Hello all! A mother from Canada adopted her little boy at the end of September from Ningxia and she was going through the packet they gave her. They said this was her son and his “friends”.I know it’s a little photo, but Amelie is being held by the woman on the right.
It’s like getting a 6 month sonogram or something! HA HA!!!
Our article 5 was dropped off at the US consulate in China this morning and will be ready in exactly 2 weeks. Then we can FINALLY apply to travel.
But it sure sounds like Greek when I talk about these steps to the adoption, right? If you aren’t involved in the adoption community it must seem like paperwork nightmare.
I have been asked to update exactly where we are. So here goes and I hope it all makes sense.
We were waiting for our LOA – letter of acceptance. This was China telling us that we passed review and that Wang Lei was matched to us and we could proceed with telling America we wanted to bring her into the country. That arrived on 11/15/2010.
We immediately applied for our I 800 approval. We found out that we were approved on 11/29/2010 via email and then received our letter last Thursday. This happened really fast and that was exciting.
Now we are waiting for the State Department to “cable” our approval to the US embassy in China. This can take up to 10 days.
Once we get that notification we forward it on to our agency and they drop off our Article 5 application at the US Consulate in China. Then exactly 2 weeks later they pick that up and forward it to Beijing.
THEN we are technically in the final line – the wait for Travel Approval (TA). That can take 2-3 weeks and then we can buy plane tickets and head off to China.
Why are we so concerned about this right now? Well, for one we don’t want Wang Lei to wait for us any longer than she has too! But Chinese New Year is 2/3 and if we don’t start our trip by around 1/16 and finish our trip by 2/1 we can’t leave for China until 2/11. So our trip would be delayed by a full month!!
For those who asked, did that help at all? I hope so. For those who have asked what to pray for – you can pray that our paperwork would continue to move smoothly. Thanks!
Our LOA (Letter of Approval) arrived at our agency yesterday on Day 55 of the wait! We are now waiting on FedEx to deliver the hard copy to us so that we can sign it and FedEx it to the US office that will approve us so we can move forward. We still have some waiting to do and documents to file on the American side of things, but we hope to be applying for our Travel Approval soon.
The best part about the LOA is that it’s like our offical referral. Our documents have passed through review in China and Wang Lei in now ours. It’s a huge relief!!!
Her name will be Amelie Wang Lei and we are so excited and can’t wait for travel! Praise God for His goodness to our family!