as good a news as I can find

Well, let me take this time to explain a little more about the adoption process, at least in China. Some of this I have already said, but maybe you need a review! We submitted our dossier (all the crazy paperwork we were required to fill out) in February 2007. When it arrived in China it was given an LID (log in date), ours is February 13, 2007. That is the date everything will be referenced to as long as we are waiting. Well, once your dossier gets logged in it basically sits in a filing cabinet until someone can review it. They are reviewed in the order they are received. SO...we think they have finished reviewing all dossiers through January 2007. Which means, ours will be reviewed shortly.

What does that mean? Well, not a whole lot. If they have questions about your dossier, i.e. with the homestudy, physicals or financial statement, they will call you to get it cleared up. If you do not give them the information they want or need you will be removed. Now, that might sounds scarey, but we totally trust our agency. They compiled our dossier for us (not all agencies do that) and made sure all i's were dotted and t's were crossed. We actually had to fill out a few of the forms numerous times because they found small errors. And now that I think about it, I had to have our Dr fill out another physical form for each of us because it was filled out in black ink and signed in blue ink. They are picky, but we are confident we got in right.

The dossier goes into the review room, and if everything checks out you don't hear a word from them until they post that February 2007 has been reviewed. At that point our dossier will not be looked at again until the match us with our daughter. In know it is a small step, but any step in that direction is great.

On another note, with the recent devastation from the huge earthquake in China I ask that you pray for the country as a whole. From reading some info sites it appears that all the major orphanages are ok. Some sustained damage, but so far there have been no reports of injuries from orphanages. I do not know if this will have any impact on the length of our wait. We don't really know why it is so long in the first place, so it is hard to know what will affect it and what will not. Regardless, the people in China need prayer!