JOURNEY TO CHINA

December 18th….ON OUR WAY TO GET LI-ANN…. We leave for the airport in the next 15 minutes. Fly to Fuzhou and meet Li-Ann an the civil affairs office. We get Mia on Thursday in Guangzhou.

December 13th….. We are in Japan at the moment. We left home on Saturday the 10th and arrived in Tokyo on Sunday afternoon. Exhausted from the long flight. Now we are trying to overcome the jet lag…. Waiting for the Chinese to issue us with Travel approval. We are flying to Beijing on Thursday to wait there for the approval to arrive. We will do some sight seeing while we wait.

December 9th…. We just heard today that Article 5 has been delivered to the CCCWA in Beijing. Now we wait for the them to issue us with Travel approval. This is the last document we need.

December 7th….. Our i-800  for both girls has been approved and the National Visa Center in Guangzhou China has been cabled. All the additional paperwork has been dropped off as well. We wait for Article 5 approval now. It shouldn’t take very long because we have an expedite on the process.

November 25th….. HAPPY THANKSGIVING . Did  anyone try my yam’s recipe? My kids love picking the marshmallows off the top of the dish. Here’s an update on our adoption process. We are expecting a lot to happen this next week. I added a  new picture of Mia to my blog. She is wearing the green jacket. I haven’t had any more news on LiAnn for a while now. I know she’s in good hands. Thank you for praying.

November 14th…… Had the appointment with the congressmans office today. YAY!!!!! They are expediting the process. We should be in China in the middle of December to get both girls. Please pray that everything goes smoothly. We would love to be back by Christmas.

November 11th……..We filed our documents today. on 11/11/2011. There’s just something about that number that makes me feel good. Our LOA came yesterday.

November 5th….. We have all our documents filled out and ready. Once we get our LOA we will send off our I-800 documents to the USCIS. This is where the Congressman’s office will get involved to expedite this part of the process. We have our visa applications all filled out and ready to send as well because we are expecting this portion of the process to go very quickly. Pray that it all goes smoothly so that we can bring out little girls home before Christmas. It is possible now that the we have the congressman on our side.

November 4th…… LiAnn had the surgery and is doing fine. They also found that she had an enlarged right tonsil which they removed as it was blocking her throat. My poor baby. I wish i was there to comfort her.

November 3rd…. We just got word that out little LiAnn is in hospital. She is having her cleft palate repaired. She will have to stay in hospital for 10 days. This is apparently normal in China.

November 2nd….. Great news today. Our agency called to say that China has linked the dossiers of our two little girls. We have a log in date of 9/26/11. This is great news because it shows that China is co-operating with us because of Mia’s heart condition. We hope to have the Letter of Acceptance( LOA) very soon. Our Congressman is standing by and once we get the LOA he can speed up the next process.

October 27th…… Our dossier was sent to China today. Our agency is calling China on Sunday night the 30th, to respectfully request they link the two dossiers and expedite the LOA’s for both children because of the seriousness of Mia’s heart condition.  Please pray we have a favorable response.We have already contacted our congressman and they are standing by to assist on the U S side. We have a very good friend congresswoman who has spoken directly to our local congressman about our situation.

October 25th……. We just heard from our agency that we have a LID date of  September 26th. this is for LiAnn. I am so relieved. We are already at day  28 of the approximately 60 day wait for our LOA.

October 22nd……. So much has happened since my last post. We  got our approval from USCIS and it was delivered on Monday. We sent that off with the other documents to get Certified and authenticated. They are now on their way to our agency. They should arrive on Monday morning the 24th. All of those documents  which includes the cardiologist report and  a copy of our original dossier will be sent to China to be linked with LiAnn’s ( our original dossier) and our agency will respectfully ask the Chinese to expedite the process because of Little Mia’s heart condition. You can see the latest pictures of Mia on the slideshow in the gallery. Please continue to pray for her. She seems so sad in all her pictures.  LiAnn will be having the cataract in her right eye removed soon. It will be replaced with an artificial lens. Her left eye seems fine now. She is such a character. LiAnn is in a rehab center in Beijing. She is very well cared for so we are not worried about her. We don’t know much about the institution that Mia is at which makes us really worry about her.

October 12th…..Going to see the cardiologist about Mia today. We are going to get a report from him which will accompany Mia’s Dossier. The report will state the urgency of her condition. We are hoping and praying that China will understand the severity of her this and allow us quick entry into China. We will also be visiting our congress woman  next week so that we can speed up the US side of the process. We need to expedite this asap. Please pray for Mia.

October 11th……Called USCIS today. I spoke with our officer who told me that the approval would be sent out tomorrow if everything checked out. I know everything’s ok with it so I’m expecting to receive it in the mail on Friday or Saturday. Once we get this approval we will send it along with the addendum to our home study  to be authenticated by the Chinese Embassy. It will then be on its way to China to meet up with LiAnn’s dossier. We are perusing expediting the process because of Mia’s medical condition. She has a heart defect which cannot be repaired in China. Her only hope of  surviving is here in the USA where she can get the medical attention she so desperately needs. I have a video of her and her little mouth and finger tips are blue because she is not getting enough oxygen. Please pray we can get there quickly.

October 5th……. Waiting to hear what our Log in Date is for LiAnn. Also waiting for approval from USCIS for Mia..

September 23rd…… Received  our receipt that USCIS have received our application to adopt a 2nd child. This should take about 2 – 3 weeks for approval. Now we wait!!!!!!….. This is the hard part.

September 22nd…… Our Dossier was officially sent to China today. Waiting to hear what the LID (Log in Date) will be so we can start counting the weeks for our LOA( letter of approval) from China. We also submitted our addendum and filed Supplement 3 for Mia to USCIS today. This is to add 2 children to our Dossier.

September 19th….. We got PA (Pre-Approval) from china to adopt little Mia today….. Thank the Lord.

September 16th….. Addendum has been approved. Its on its way to us and we should have it by Tuesday. We will add this to our Supplement 3 requesting USCIS to approve us to adopt 2 special needs children. The wait on this is approximately 3 weeks.

September 13th….. Kim and I locked the file of a 2 year old little girl today. A little sister for LiAnn. They will be 11 months apart. We have to do an addendum to our home study which will be sent to USCIS for approval. We are hoping to get both babies on the same trip to China. We will name her Mia Faye Clement. We are waiting for our PA(Pre-Approval)from China.

September 9th 2011…… Our approval arrived in the mail today. Our office used the return envelope I provided. Kim and I rushed down to the UPS store had it notarized and sent off to be state certified and authenticated.  Our dossier is finally ready for translation. After that it goes to China to be processed. This is called Logging the dossier in LID.Then we start counting the days to the next step which is receiving our LOA letter of acceptance from China. I hope this speeds up. Its been taking approximately 7 – 8 weeks to get this document. Hoping to be logged in by September 30th….

UPDATE 6:04 pm ……. Pacific time…. Just looked at my cell phone. I missed a call from our officer.  She left a message stating that we have been approved…..God answers prayers he really does.

September 7th 2011……I called again. Still no approval. I’m shocked to say the least. Kim keeps trying to calm me down. He always tries his best to make everything work out for me. He gave me a scripture this morning after he had been praying in his garden. It was about everything being in Gods perfect time. Ecclesiastes 8vs 6 For there is a proper time and procedure for every matter,though a man’s misery weighs heavily upon him.

I believe that its just the waiting thats so frustrating. So close and yet so far…..

September 6th 2011…….Well a lot has happened these past few days. We had a delay because of the long week end. I finally managed to speak with her today. She acknowledged receipt of it and that was that. Waiting for approval now. Should be any day now.

September 1st 2011…….I tracked the package this morning and it had been delivered. I’m going to call her later today. I also checked the return tracking number but nothing yet……

August 31st 2011…….Well ….I couldn’t wait any longer, so I called immigration and asked to speak to the officer assigned to our case. She informed me that a RFE (Request for more Evidence)had been sent out. I asked why and she told me that the social worker who prepared the home study had not signed it. Our agency had a different social worker sign our home study. I was so upset…… because I had picked this up before submitting the application. I informed our agency of this and they told me that everything was in order and that our Social worker did not have to sign it. The in house social workers signature would be fine. They haven’t had any problems with this in the past. I should have insisted but because this is our first adoption I left it to the pro’s…….. I won’t do that again. Rena my assistant and I got to work. We had to track down our social worker who was working in  down town L.A an hour away. She met us at a UPS store where she signed the paperwork and we notarized it right there. This was an all day affair in L.A Traffic…. I was exhausted!!!!! We had to call Immigration to get a physical address so that we could overnight the corrected Home Study. We put it all together with a pre paid express mail envelope hoping that once  the officer approves the 1-800A she could just slip the approval  into the envelope and mail it back. I had a little note in there pleading with her to PLEASE use the  prepaid envelope.  Well lets see if she does…. I’ll keep you posted.

August 25th 2011…. Well here we are Its Thursday already and still no approval. I can’t believe it.

August 19th 2011….Well we called and spoke to the officer that is reviewing our case. She informed us that our file was in a pile on her desk and that she had not got to it yet. I just thanked her and said good bye. I’ll be e-mailing her after the week-end for sure.

August 18th 2011….Waiting to hear if we’ve been approved yet. I will call today and find out.

August 17th 2011…. We heard today that we have been assigned an officer who is now in the process approving our application to adopt. We are very excited to be coming to the end of this long step. We should get our  1-800A approval paperwork in the mail by Monday or Tuesday next week. Once our paperwork (Dossier) has been logged in at the Chinese embassy we will be looking for our (LOA) which is our letter of acceptance. This is taking approximately 7 weeks. Please pray that all these steps speed up for us. It would be so great to have our baby home before Christmas.

August 1st 2011….We arrived home from Israel today. I put a call into immigration to see if we had been assigned an officer yet. Unfortunately we have not. They informed us that it usually takes 90 days from receipt date to approval. I really don’t believe we will wait that long. From what I have seen from other adoptions it takes around 60 days. If this is the case we should get the approval by the end of August. I’ll be calling them every week.

July 31st 2011… We have been in Israel for the past week preparing for the September event we are having on September 20th -30th. When we landed  I got a call from our agency who excitedly told me that she had a cute picture of our little Xioalian sneaking candy from the managers purse and was caught red handed. You can see it in on the Gallery page. We leave back for home tonight and we are anxiously waiting for our 1-800A approval. Will keep you all posted.

July 20th 2011…We walked into the office today and presented our appointment receipts to the officer. She looked at the dates and said “cant you make your scheduled dates?” We both answered, NO!!  I piped up and said “We are adopting a little girl from China” she just proceeded to stamp the paperwork and told us to fill out our information and then gave us numbers and told us to wait. There was hardly any one there so we were in and out in 30 minutes. When we arrived back we made the call to the USCIS office to tell them that we had gone in early and that our fingerprints were available in the system. We just wanted them to know that. I will be calling them every week from now until we get the approval notice. Keep praying so we can get to China as quickly as possible.

July 18th 2011…. Yes I was right mine came today with the exact same date as Kim’s. August the 9th. I don’t think we will wait for that date. We are going to walk in to the office and ask them to do the fingerprints on wednesday.  I have heard that it makes no difference to speeding up the process. We are going to try anyway.

July 16th 2011…. I went to the mail box just before leaving for the Den broadcast Today and there was the first notice for Kim for his fingerprint appointment date which was set for August the 9th.  I expect mine to be in the mail on Monday.

July 5th 2011…. We received our I-800A receipts in the mail today.  waiting anxiously for our fingerprint date.

June 29th 2011……We received our Home Study Approval in the mail today. We are so excited to get this portion of the process behind us. We have submitted the 1-800A form to the USCIS  today, they will receive it tomorrow morning June 30th. We wait anxiously for our fingerprint appointment and then our 1-797 form which will go into our Dossier package and be sent for authentication. Once this is done our dossier will be on its way to China.