It's Official!!

She is ours!!!! Now, we must deal with immigration services here in the US. I'll be on the phone today trying to get some things straight. We are now looking to travel in Feb or March. We're thrilled and overwhelmed at the same time. So much to do!! Her name is Lydia Xiaozhen Scheele.

Pre-Approved

We were pre-approved in 1 week! The usual time is 2-4 wks. We now wait 60-100 days for the official referral. We, too, are hoping and praying for it to be closer to 60 days!

News to Share

After taking a little break from blogging, we are back with exciting news to share! In September, Rob and I filled out the application for a special needs child also referred to as a "Waiting Child". Periodically, our adoption agency sends out a list of these children for us to view. On one particular day, 3 special children stood out to me from the long list. I forwarded those children to Rob at work. He, too, was interested in finding out more information on one particular child. We talked about it further that night and contacted the adoption agency the next morning. We received her file that afternoon. Since then, we have seen and spoken to many specialists, our social worker, our adoption agency, and the orphanage/foster home. This Wednesday, after much prayer, our family chose to send a "Letter of Intent" to China asking to adopt this 6 yr old little girl. We now wait for China to pull our file and approve the match. This usually takes anywhere from 2-4 wks. If all goes well, we will be traveling to China in the next 5-8 months. We have so much to do...

LID 030309

Hallelujah - we have a Log In Date - March 3, 2009!!!

We just returned home from our annual skiing trip to NM. We had a great time with friends. Above is a picture of the guys skiing Taos - beautiful!

Paperwork China Bound

Our paperwork is officially scheduled to be sent overnight to China this Friday, February 20th. Our adoption agency, Great Wall, has a branch in Beijing, China. It will be delivered to the CCAA within days. It usually takes 30-45 days before it is officially registered with the CCAA. The day it is registered will be our Log in Date. This is the beginning of our referral process and where the "really" long wait begins.
We can now apply through our agency for the "Waiting Child Program". We feel certain that we will go this route. We ask for prayers as we consider which type of special need's child the Lord wishes for our family. We know that our thoughts and the Lord's are not always in sync. Therefore, we pray that we will have peace when we receive our referral. We have no doubt that the Lord has chosen our child. He has already softened our hearts towards adopting a child with special needs and for this we are thankful!

Gotta it in the mail today!!!!

Day 65, we received our approval from the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services! After my meltdown last Friday, I am shocked, but very grateful! I got a wild hair to call the Department of Homeland Security - U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in Chicago last Friday to check on the status of our case. Just to find out that we, the Scheele's, could not be found in their files, not even with our account number. I checked online and again, our name or number was not on file. I even tried to call back again, thinking that I may get someone else that surely knew what they were doing. Nope, we were not in their system. I lost it! Fortunately I was home alone, Rob did not have to witness my emotional state. I quickly emailed our adoption agency. Within minutes, Diedra, our Dossier Consultant emailed us back. She was sure that we would not hear anything for 90 days or more and that is why they didn't have us in their system yet. She probably knew more than she could tell me. I did feel better after conversing with her. The Lord gave me peace and I was actually able to get a lot done that day.

There was, however, one mistake on our letter of approval. They had the Approval Valid Until date at March 27th, 2008. It should have read March 27th, 2010. I called and it was corrected and a new hard copy will be put in the mail on Monday. Again, I am very grateful and excited that we are another step closer to getting our Log-In-Date (LID).

Thank you to those who check in periodically on our progress. I know that I was being prayed for last Friday. Any other time, something like this would have ruined my whole day.