Last Step Before DTC.

Well, Christmas is over.  I'm always amazed at how quickly it comes and how quickly it goes.  We had a wonderful time with family and friends.  I am so grateful to our Father for each one of them.  We are very, very blessed.

This picture was taken on Christmas day on our friends' deck.  Yes, we had a beautiful white Christmas in Colorado!

On Wednesday, Jim and I  took our I-797 form to be certified at the Colorado Secretary of State office.  Then yesterday I drove that up to our agency, and later that day all of our documents were sent to the Chicago consulate to be authenticated.  That should come back in a few days, and then we will be DTC (Dossier To China)!!  We have worked toward this goal for over five months, so I will so SO GLAD to finally have everything finished on our end.  Then we will wait some more, haha.

Please pray for families who are in process of adoption from Russia.  You may have heard that Russia has stopped all adoptions to the U.S., even those who are close to being finalized.  With Russian adoptions there are mandatory trips to visit the child before bringing them home, so several of these parents have already met and bonded with their children and vice versa.  These children fully expect that their new parents will return for them soon.  They full expect to have a family.  And now this will keep that from happening, with no explanation to these little ones.  If you've seen video of orphanages in Russia, you know that they are not any kind of place you'd want your child to be.  Please pray that our God, for Whom nothing is too difficult, will intervene for these helpless ones and for these families who have already given their hearts and sacrificed so much.

Adoption Update and Christmas!

Well, we were approved by USCIS to adopt one child from a Hague Convention country.  This is good.  This is what we really want to do.  Haha.  Our officer emailed me on Wednesday to say that we would be approved that afternoon, and by Friday we had the I-797 form in our mailbox.  Jim and I will take it to the Colorado Secretary of State office on Wednesday to have it certified; then all our documents will be sent to the consulate in Chicago for authentication (believe me, this stuff is seriously authentic already) and then our dossier will be off to China!  Phew.  I'll be so glad when that's all done and out of our hands.

I look so forward to next Christmas when our sweet girl is with us, and will enjoy the wonders of the season and the miracle that is Jesus come to earth for the very first time.  But for now we just pray continually for her and trust our Father to hold her safely in His arms and to whisper His love to her spirit.

This video went around last year, but it's awesome, so I'm posting it again this year.  Merry Christmas, everyone!

This. Should. Not. Be.

The permanent sign stands across the street from where the Aurora theater shooting happened, and marks the place where a large memorial sprang up on that day in July.  It is just a couple of miles from our house.  When I drove by it the other day, a new sign had been added.  

This. Should. Not Be. 

 I'm holding on tightly to Romans 16:20.  "The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet."

A Bump in the Road . . .

Well, we are still waiting for approval of our I-800a application from USCIS.  We should have been approved last Friday, but instead were sent a "Request for Evidence" (RFE).  Apparently there were a couple of statements missing from the home study that needed to be included before approval.  So there ensued a scurrying of emails and phone calls to our agency and social worker.  Social worker wrote an addendum to the home study; agency FedEx'd it to USCIS today.  So, we are really praying that this new document would get to the officer's desk quickly, and that approval would come this week!  Clearly our dossier will not be in China this month, as we had planned.  But we are trusting God for His timing.

We're enjoying the Christmas season, complete with tree and presents and music and movies and yummy treats.  But at the same time, there is always the thought in the back of my mind that we are missing someone.  Caylie will still be half a world away as the rest of us are celebrating on Christmas Day.    

And Even More Waiting . . .

Yes, that is the name of this game.  Waiting.  Jim and I pray every day that God would keep His hand on our paperwork and that it would be processed without delay, wherever it is at that moment.  We know that we have a very real enemy who hates that we are giving Caylie a family and hope, and who would thwart our every effort in this process.  But we know that God is GOD and he will bring to pass what He has called us to.  Even though the wait is long and difficult, we know that we must trust in His timing for every step.  We will travel to bring our daughter home exactly when He wants that to happen; not a day earlier or a day later.

In the mean time, we pray for our little one, that our loving Father would be preparing her heart to leave all that she knows and that when the day comes for us to become a family, she would be ready to accept the love that we so want to give her.  We pray for Him to be working in her spirit, preparing her for the day that she will hear about Jesus.  We pray for our own hearts, that God would fill them to the brim with an uncommon love for our sweet girl, even before we've met her.  We pray that God would use these weeks and months of waiting to prepare our family and our marriage for the changes we are about to encounter.  We pray for Caylie's foster family, that they would have the opportunity to hear the gospel.  I don't think we were given pictures of her foster mother by chance.  Our Father wanted us to know that she exists; to see her face, and to pray for her, even though we may never know her name.

As for the process . . . we are still waiting for approval from USCIS.  We got our finger-print appointments last week, which were for December 20.  We decided to try walking in, instead of waiting for three more weeks, but having read stories about this on adoption websites, I was very nervous about it!   It seems that in some field offices around the country, walk-ins are welcomed, but at others, walk-ins get a rather severe chewing out!  I did not want to come across as an irritation to these people or as people who thought they didn't have to follow the rules.  I wanted us to reflect Jesus from the time we walked in to the time we walked out.  We prayed that God would prepare the hearts of the workers there for our arrival before it even happened.  We prayed that He would give us favor with them and that they would allow us to finger print early, even if they didn't know why.  We prayed that we would be a blessing to them and honor our Jesus through every step of the visit.

 After we had prayed, I was still very nervous, although I shouldn't have been.  I should have trusted our God to do this, because He did it!!  I expected to have to explain ourselves to a grumpy security guard at the door, as a friend had had to do the previous week.  There wasn't even a security guard there!  I expected to have to speak to a supervisor to explain our reasons for going early.  Nope, not at all!  We walked in, asked if we could wait in line, even though it wasn't out day.  Yes, we could, we were told.  We waited in a long line, filled out the form, waited about 10 more minutes, dealt with friendly, helpful people, smiled a lot, talked about our adoption, talked to the workers about their job and their day, smiled some more, and that was that!  God was SO FAITHFUL to us!  I was so amazed.  Thank you to all who knew about this and prayed with us!

We are now waiting to be assigned an officer at USCIS who will review our prints and application.  Please pray that this would happen without delay.  After we get approval, all of our documents must be authenticated at the US consulate, and then FINALLY our dossier will be sent to China!  I have been really praying that this would all happen in December, but right now that seems impossible, considering how long the last couple of steps have taken.  However, as the title of this blog says, God > Impossible!  If He wants our dossier in China this month, that's where it will be.  :)