Great News

I saw it the minute the car turned off our street into our driveway.  As my friend backed out of the driveway, his headlights focused on the big white envelope tucked into our door.

It’s here! True to their word, the Consulate mailed all of our dossier back to us today. I ripped open the envelope the second I got into the door… and I’m thrilled to share happy news! The Consulate authenticated all of our documents, which means our completed dossier will be on its way to our agency first thing Monday morning, and will most likely arrive in China at the CCAA before the end of next week! As soon as we turn our dossier in to our agency next week, then all we have to do is just wait for The Big Phone Call!

Thank you again to all who are joining us in prayer and positive thoughts on this journey. We are incredibly grateful– and we have a long way to go!

 

Approved!

One reason for keeping this adoption journey blog is to be able to update friends and family when we experience successes and setbacks. Today, I have the pleasure of sharing happy news!

Even though we had our biometrics appointment with the USCIS on Friday, I decided to give a call to Our Government at lunchtime today to see if our prints were received and if we were assigned an immigration officer. As I’ve mentioned a few times before, the usual time frame for getting the official Federal Government Two Thumbs Up ™ takes between 60-90 days in total, with the approval coming in about at least a month or so after the appointment.

When I inquired today, a very friendly employee over at USCIS happily informed me that not only had we been assigned an immigration officer, but that they had approved our application for adoption the day we had our fingerprints taken! This is an approval time of less than 24 hours!

So now, we just wait for the official clearance document to submit with our dossier. This is the final little bit of dossier that we need to gather, and then it all gets sealed by the Chinese Consulate.

When the preparation and documentation process is this involved, you have to celebrate every victory. Today is a great day indeed!

 

Signed, Sealed, Sealed, Sealed again, and Delivered

After slogging through what seems like an endless stack of forms, clearances, and documentation, we have now encountered the holy grail of adoption paperwork for China– the dossier. For the pre-application, application, and home study, we easily racked up over 75 pages of forms, if not more. That pales in comparison to the documentation required for the final packet submitted to the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA). Equal in importance to the contents of the dossier is the multiple levels of certification that prove the documents submitted are authentic and valid. Continue reading