Another Month and More Progress!

It's hard to believe that another month has come and gone since I last posted - the fact that time continues to keep flying by makes me hopeful that I will be on a plane to China before I know it (a girl can dream, right?).  In the midst of vacation, softball games and baseball tournaments, we managed to make a lot of progress on our "paper chase".  We arrived home from vacation via a red eye plane flight on Saturday, July 14th; within two hours of landing in Philadelphia we found ourselves in the blazing July sun at a baseball tournament.  It took us a few days to recover from jet lag and in that time we met with our social worker two more times in order to  finish our home study visits.  Our social worker is completely awesome and finished the report within two days and sent it to corporate for final review and approval!  Our goal was to have the draft completed by August 1st and then it takes about two weeks for final review and approval - we are hoping to have our final review completed this week so she was able to get us ahead by two weeks (YAY!!).  We have also received our passports (complete with horrible mug shots of both of us!).  In the last week, we have been busy working our way through the 10 hour Hague required training course, Waiting Child Applications and talking with medical doctors about our list of special needs - WOW!! 

I hope that sounds impressive (LOL!) - it has definitely been a whirlwind and taken a lot of work to get all this done so quickly.  So - where are we in the process?  We are getting closer...

As soon as the home study is approved, our social worker will send us the required notarized copies (she leaves for vacation on August 10th - pray that we can get these completed prior to her leaving!).  Once the notarized copies are in our hands, we can send one copy along with our I-800a form to the USCIS (United States Immigration) for approval from the USA to adopt internationally.  We will be issued a fingerprinting appointment at the Immigration office in Philadelphia - after the fingerprints are taken, we wait for our I-797 from USCIS - this gives us approval from Immigration to adopt Makenna.  We've been told this process takes approximately five weeks. 

Then what??

Then we submit our dossier to China and wait for a picture of our daughter... 

In the meantime... please continue to keep our family in your prayers - we are excited about these next steps, but the reality of the financial impact at each step continues to try to steal the joy in these moments.  God has provided what we have needed at each step (remember that amazing yard sale ?!?!) and we TRUST that he will continue to finish that which HE has started.  Adoption has stolen our hearts - we have a love for orphans that has come alive in these past months and we firmly believe that God has called us to adopt Makenna and continue to advocate for orphans and adoption after Makenna is home.  We were reminded on Sunday morning about storing our treasures in heaven and not on earth - what a sweet reminder and challenge to keep trusting, hoping and praying that God will continue to direct us and lead us.  We are planning our next fundraiser - an event for the whole family - our "Race for Makenna"!  Check the page out on facebook here, mark your calendar for October 6th and stay tuned for more information right here on our blog! 

Thank you for journeying with us - we know that we have so many faithful readers and prayer warriers standing with us as we wait and pray... may you all have a Blessed week!