Last Wednesday and Thursday were kind of a whirlwind with the
unexpected arrival of our Letter of Approval, LOA. I had emailed our agency on Monday to see if there was a problem since we hadn’t yet received
pre-approval. The response I received was “You have your approval. Just sit
tight.” I thought maybe she really meant pre-approval, not approval. Then Wednesday came, and we got an email from
one of the other women on the China Team stating that they had our LOA and
would overnight it to us to sign.
I feel bad for anyone in the adoption community that has
been waiting forever for a LOA. I don’t know why we received ours so quickly,
while others wait for 3 plus months. Anyway, we signed the letter and
overnighted it back to Children’s Hope. We also express mailed our I-800 and
I-864W to the USCIS(immigration).
Once the USCIS approves us, they will send our file to
the National Visa Center, who will cable our file to the US Embassy in China
for approval of our visa petition. This is for the child’s visa. The US Embassy
will issue an Article 5 when they determine that everything is in order for us
to adopt. The Article 5 has to go to CCCWA before they can issue Travel Approval.
We will most likely be traveling in July to bring our daughter home.
About our pre-approval, I have no idea when it was issued.
I’ve requested a copy of it from our agency, but have not received it yet.
On another note, the answers to the poll questions at the far right are:
1. 12-18 months (She was 13 months at the time of the referral.), 2. Guangxi province,
and 3. probably July.
We have submitted papers for our home study update. It
doesn’t expire until June 29, but papers were requested mid-April in order to
complete before the expiration date.
Hopefully, everything will go smoothly on that end.
Lori
