Journey of Faith:Our Little Guy From China

I am late in posting this, but here goes anyway.  So last Thursday was my birthday and we were waiting for our "cable".  In the adoption world this is when our I-800 is approved and the National Visa Center(NVC) emails (cables) our approval to the consulate.  I had emailed the NVC to see if our case was entered into their system and it had been as of 10/12/10.  I had a feeling we were cabled on my birthday (10/14/10) but no email arrived in my inbox.  Tim and I celebrated my birthday and I really didn't think about it.  But then the next morning at work all I could think about was that we were cabled and we didn't know it yet. 

At this stage, PAPs want to get this approval via email to quickly send it off to their agency because the agency needs to send it off right away so that we can wait for our next step, Article 5.  So Friday, the 15th came and I again emailed the NVC and was quickly sent the approval via email.  It was dated 10/14/10--my birthday--happy birthday to me!  Any step finished in this process would be a great birthday present.  I emailed it to our agency who does not work on Fridays, but got an email from a gal there that said she got it and will have it ready to be sent to China on Monday.  So long story short I got what I wanted!

But then as I opened my email account I found two emails from Sheri and Katherine with Giftstochinawithlove.com--this is the care package company that we used and would highly recommend them!!!  We got pictures of Caleb at his birthday party we gave him from afar.  His house mama and baba actually gave it to him and they were so gracious and said they would make sure they gave him a party...makes my heart melt.  So enjoy as I have!!

 

We received our LOA on Friday, October 1st.  Signed the document on Monday, October 4th.  Our agency was able to email it over to the best officer in the world over at the USCIS office and boom we were approved on 10/5/10.  Now we are waiting to be "cabled".  Now that our I-800 is provisionally approved it will be sent to the NVC (National Visa Center in New Hampshire).  They will upload our information into their system and send it electronically to the US Consulate in Guangzhou.  This is what is referred to as the "Cable".  We are moving right along now! 

This was a great day--to see what the LOA (Letter of Acceptance), also known as Letter Seeking Confirmation (LSC) looked like!  To actually hold it in our hands, something we have waited forever for--it was a great feeling.  We went to the agency today and met with them for a few hours, signed the form, asked a lot of questions.  Filled out some more forms.  I have to admit, our agency has been on top of it when it comes to the forms.  I believe we have all the forms we need and most are filled out waiting to be sent whereever they need to be when the time comes.  We did some proactive things before we got LOA and should be getting our I800 approval any day now.  I will explain more about the next steps in another post.  For now we are just celebrating this huge milestone!

Tim and I started looking into care packages that we could send to Caleb because his birthday was on 9/22.  We knew that we had not received LOA by the time the week began for his birthday, and we were sad about this.  But I kept researching, sending emails to the care package companies about different questions I had and soon, before you knew it, we had ordered one!  Because of the holidays around Caleb's birthday we got a late start, but the photo book turned out great.  We just sent one with photos of us, our home and kitty and such.  It included candies, and a card from us and a cake.  I hope the 5 kids with Caleb will really enjoy the cake!  Later we may send more to him.  We are hoping to get updated measurements for him.  So it will be delivered to him on October 6th.  We wonder if he will understand any of it.  But we hope it is just the beginning of us "talking" to him before we get there to meet him. We are hoping we will get photos, but are expecting not to get them until we pick him up. Enjoy the photos of some of the items we sent him!!

Our agency gal, Jill, called me today at about 1:38pm.  I saw I missed the call.  Then I went to my new cell phone to see if I had a message.  I saw that she called there and that I had a voice mail.  My heart was pounding with excitement.  I knew I still had a lot of work to get done before leaving for the day.  But yet, I still wanted to know why she was calling...could it be????  We were always the one to contact them because they did not have any news for us for so long.  I tried calling Tim.  I tried to get into my voicemail, but I just got a new phone and did not know what the password was to get voicemail.  I went to Verizons website to see if there was a password set.  Could not find a thing.  Still working...  Enough time went by that Jill called again at 1:51 pm. She said she did not leave a message she just called every number we have.  That would be six numbers...she started over with my work number...she got me!!!  I was so excited!  It came via DHL.  Now, mind you, our agency does not work on Fridays, so it was unexpected, but we are so grateful that Jill was there to receive the DHL package. 

Monday we will sign, give them the next fees and move forward....what a great weekend!  Wow, I guess Tim just needed to leave the city for a weekend and it would happen.  I just wish I could give him a big hug.  He would call me every day to this point and ask "so did Jill call?"  or he would say " I guess Jill did not call, right?"  It broke my heart that he was thinking so much about it.

Caleb, did you hear that?  Mama and Baba are coming soon!!  We love you!! 

Love to everyone!!!