When are you going to China?

This is the question that we hear more than any other. And unfortunately, it's the hardest one to answer! Now that we have our LOA, we can more accurately predict when we will be traveling. Of course, nothing is certain until we can actually book our plane tickets, which will be a week or 2 before we actually leave. But here's a timeline of the final steps to give you a better idea of what happens now.

• We file our I800 application with USCIS. It usually takes 2 weeks for approval (we got approval yesterday, in 13 days!)
• We get our visa approval from the NVC in China. This takes 5-7 days.
• Our agency "drops off" article 5 at the CCAA. It takes two weeks to be processed and then we have article 5 pick up.
• We await travel approval (TA) from the Chinese government and schedule our consulate appointment (CA) for when we are in China. This usually takes 2-3 weeks.

So, there is a total of 7-8 weeks before we receive TA and can book our flights and go! We are praying that our wait times are on the short end of things taking us closer to 7 weeks (another adoptive family we know got TA in only 3 days!) We plan to leave as soon as we can after TA which might mean that we leave a week (or possibly even less!) after that. We are really praying that we can travel over Thanksgiving, but if not then it will be in early December. We know that God has perfect timing, and we are praying that his timing involves Thanksgiving!

Here's a helpful diagram that documents the entire China adoption process. Please note that this is only applicable to China, other countries have different steps and timelines. We are on step 10 right now, should be on step 11 in less than a week!