Journey of Faith:Our Little Guy From China

I have love wild Olive tees!  They are having a giveaway and I would love some of their t-shirts, but the giveaway is not only for tees, but tickets to Women of Faith - Over The Top Event in Hartford, CT on November 19th and 20th.  Oh, how I would love to go, but it is not good timing with the adoption.  I will try and win the t-shirts, but even if I don't, this is a great website for t-shirts that are faith based.  The styles and colors are always changing. 

If you want to enter, just go check them out here http://www.wildolivetees.com/blog/. 

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!