We completed our Dossier and sent all of our paperwork to China at the end of June, and were logged into the system on July 9th. With Lily's adoption it took 170 days for us to complete the next step, which was receiving our Letter of Acceptance from China. This was extremely long (I've actually never heard of a longer wait!) since average waits at the time were 60-70 days, so this time we were hopeful that our wait would be much shorter. We were so thankful that it was! Our LOA showed up in the computer system 50 days later on August 28 and it was at our agency on August 31. We quickly signed it and sent our paperwork on to US Immigration. They approved us two weeks later on September 18! We had to jump through a few more small hoops before we could send in our last bit of paperwork. I was a little anxious because China has a week-long holiday at the beginning of October, and I wanted to get our Article 5 paperwork submitted before they shut down. We received our last document on Monday morning, and our agency was able to drop off our paperwork the next day on September 29th! Normally Article 5 (David's visa application) takes 10 business days to process, but due to the holiday ours is scheduled to be picked up on Monday, October 19th. Then the last step is to wait for Travel Approval! We are tentatively planning to travel to China around November 14th and meet David on the 16th. We will be there about 2 weeks and travel home right after Thanksgiving. Nothing will be official until we receive that final travel approval, which we hope will happen by the end of the month.
This morning I found out the Guangzhou Consulate has decided to close Monday and Tuesday, so we will have to wait a few more days for our Article 5 to be picked up, which will push our TA back also. It's so hard not to be frustrated with these delays when we are so close to the end. But this morning when I was reading Philippians I was reminded to rejoice in the Lord and to focus on what is true. And what is true is that we are bringing David home. He will be a brother, a son, a grandson, a nephew, and a friend. He will have a family. And God has done that for him. That is something to rejoice about. We are coming SOON buddy!
