Friday, October 5, 2007

PA!

We got a phone call this morning letting us know that we've been PRE-APPROVED by China for Logan's adoption!! This is huge--we didn't anticipate a PA until late October or early November. We still need to submit our dossier and have it approved, but China has tentatively approved us. I'm totally blown away!

A new prayer request: that the remainder of our paperwork will go quickly and smoothly. We still need approval from US Immigration so that we can get Logan a visa to come home. And, we have the rest of our paperwork to authenticate and translate. We're still about 2 or 3 weeks from having our dossier sent to China. Pray that things will go as quickly as the rest of this process has.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Amazed, astounded, and totally blessed!

God is SO incredible! It's hard to even begin to share all the things He has done so far during this process. A short list:

* We learned that Logan is in a family group home, rather like foster care.
* We learned that the group that runs his family home is a Christian organization from the US providing care to children in China.
* We have TONS of pictures of Logan, many very current.
* We have taken the opportunity to sponsor Logan, so now we receive quarterly updates with pictures AND the opportunity to send gifts without causing any problems
* We can get updated measurements on Logan if we want to send clothing as a gift. We'll be taking advantage of this one before we travel!!
* Our homestudy is totally complete! Well, not quite--it must be 30 days from the first visit to the 4th visit, so we hit the 30 day mark on Friday, when our social worker comes for her last visit. She's a delightful lady and we've enjoyed working with her.
* Our state child abuse clearances, which we thought might take 3 to 5 weeks, arrived in less than 2 weeks!
* Our state allows us to walk in with our Immigration application, turn it in, and be fingerprinted on the spot. This can potentially cut as many as 75 days off the wait for the coveted 171H, the US government approval that allows Logan to receive a visa in the future. Hopefully, once our application is turned in, we will have our approval in 14-21 days. That's our next major prayer request.

I continue to be totally blown away by the things that are happening in this adoption. James is in Japan this week, and in the e-mail I just sent, I told him that Logan's story is going to be just as amazing as Ryan's! God has given both our precious boys so many incredible "God-cidences" that there's no way they won't know HE put them here in our family.

Incredibly blessed,

Jennifer