the paper chase...

IS OVER!

Well, at least the hardest part. We have collected everything we need. We are still waiting on the 171H form (the approval) from immigration, we should receive that between now and mid-January. So, on Wednesday I will drive all the paper work to our agency (I don't trust the post office with my important stuff during the holidays). Hopefully at that point she will say "Great, that's all we need from you." Then (I'm sure I've said this before) we get the documents authenticated, I think that takes about 4-6 weeks. Then they have to be translated, I think that takes a few weeks as well. So, all of this could still take another 3 months. Then the papers get sent to China. I'm learning that once your papers are in China it is possible to "track" them. I'm not sure how fun it will be to track papers for 15 months, but I guess it will show some form of progression. Again, as soon as our papers get to China we can start the countdown!

Prayer request
Please pray about the wait time for our referral; the trend shows it is steadily climbing. Dawn mentioned that at the beginning of each year you could see changes in the length of wait time, but that also could mean it is longer.
GLAD GAME: The increase in wait time for international adoptions is directly related to the number healthy children available. This means that there are less children being abandoned and more people willing to adopt! For that we can praise the Lord!!!