Nearing the End of the Paper Chase

Well we have started the paper chase, again!  We have received our LOA (Letter of Acceptance), which means that China has matched our file with Rebecca's file and said that we're a good match.  Now we've submitted that with our I800 application to the USCIS to get approval to bring her to the United States.  This approval usually takes about 2 weeks and we are at the end of week one, now.  Once we receive that approval, we will send a request to the National Visa Center to get a US visa for her.  That takes about another week.  Once we get the visa approval, we let the US consulate in Gaungzhou, China know and they will issue an approval to the Chinese Children's Welfare (CCCWA), takes another 2 weeks and then China will issue our Travel Approval.  We will travel 2-3 weeks later, depending on when we get our itinerary worked out and our flights purchased.  We are hoping to go in mid/late May.

We will be in China for 17 days.  We'll fly out on a Wed, land in Beijing on a Thursday and  tour Beijing for 2 days.  We really want to soak in all of the culture we can and 2 days to get acclimated to the time change will be good, too.  We will then travel to Rebecca's province on Sunday, meet her on Tues and officially adopt her on Wed. We will stay there for 1 week.  That Thurs or Fri we will fly to Gaungzhou, where she will have a medical appointment and get her US visa and then we'll FLY HOME!!

After starting this journey nearly 18 mo ago, I cannot believe that it is only 5-9 weeks until we meet our sweet baby girl!!  She's not really a baby at 2.5 yrs but I'm still calling her my baby!  She's petite.  At her last update, she was 20 lbs and 31.5 inches tall, so about the size of an 18 mo old.  Elizabeth and I are having fun buying lots of little girl clothes and hair bows.  Her orphanage keeps her hair cut in a crew cut, so she'll be wearing lots of headbands until her hair grows out. :-)

God has been with us through every step of this journey and he has shown us little signs all along the way.  Our second girl name that we had picked out when I was pregnant with Jonathan was Rebecca Mae. just bare with me , it will all make sense. 

One of our favorite stories is how when we identified her on a waiting child list, her online name was "Bella."  She kept pulling me back to her video. All internationally adopted children are considered "special needs" because they all suffer some trauma of being in an orphanage, losing their heritage and moving to the United States or some other country. Most of the children from China also have some sort of medical special need and when you decide to adopt from  there you are able to specify which medical needs you are comfortable accepting in a referral. Well "Bella's" needs were not any that we had said we were comfortable with but she kept pulling me back to her picture and video. So after a few weeks of prayerfully considering her, Aaron and I decided to ask our homestudy agency ( the agency that had her file) if they would be willing to transfer her file to our placement agency.  This is something they almost never do but said it they did not have a family interested in her, so we requested to look at her file. When we got her file, her Chinese name is Mei Zhi (pronounced Mae Ju (like just without the st).  We knew then looking at her file was the right choice.  We had an international adoption doctor review her file, the day we sent her the file (a Wed) we found out a family from our homestudy agency had requested her file.  i called our placement agency that Friday and told them if the other family declined her file, we wanted to accept it. They had one week to review it and accept or decline.  What a LONG week that was but the following Friday, our agency called us and told us the other family declined her file and they would transfer her file to our agency that weekend.  The following week we accepted her file officially and submitted paperwork to receive Pre-Approval from China. And that began our journey to Rebecca Mei.