We're On Our Way!

We received the call Saturday at 4:49 p.m. from Kathi at CCAI saying that our Adoption Application has been accepted! Kathi also emailed us a packet to download that includes our Service and Financial Agreements which we are to sign, have notarized, and send in with our first agency payment. After doing this, we will be emailed our Dossier Guide that will walk us through each step of completing our Dossier, which is the compilation of documents to be sent to China.

Hopefully next week our application will be approved by our homestudy agency, A Child's Waiting. Upon approval, we will be assigned a Social Worker who we will have 4 visits with. During these visits we will discuss our lives and views on parenting, etc. We also have twenty four hours of adoption workshops that we will need to attend which are being held the first two weekends of August. The process to complete our Dossier will take 3-5 months and then it will be authenticated and sent off to China. Currently, the wait time between the date the Dossier is logged in (LID) and referral of a child is running 6-7 months. Travel is typically 2 months after referral. This means that next summer, we should be travelling to bring Grace home!

Tom and I feel so blessed to be on this journey. We already have such a deep love for our little Grace Elisabeth. We think about her constantly...things like - Has she been born yet? Is she cold? Does she have enough to eat? Is she being shown love? Will she have a soft bed to sleep on tonight instead of a hard piece of ply-wood as is so often the case? Most of all, we wonder if she will ever know how much she is wanted and loved. We miss our baby and we haven't even laid eyes on her yet. We pray for God to take care of our baby until she is in our arms where she belongs.