Wrapping Up the US Paperwork

Our US paperwork is nearing completion!  We took a day trip to Des Moines on December 8 for our fingerprinting at the US Customs & Immigration Services (USCIS) office.  We hit a minor roadblock there, but two hours later the fingerprinting was complete and we were on our way.  Surprisingly, the approval came through only three days later!  It is definitely not typical to go through so quickly.

Once we get this final piece of paper in the mail -- our I-800A -- it will be authenticated, certified, and combined with all of the other documents we completed over the past few months (physical exam reports, homestudy, employment verification, background checks, etc).  This stack of papers makes up our Dossier. 

People keep asking when we're going to go get her.  The short answer: We expect to travel to China sometime between April-June 2016.  The longer answer of what's left:

• I-800A approval is authenticated at the state level
• I-800A gets certified by the Chinese Consulate in Houston
• Dossier shipped to China
• Dossier translated in China
• Dossier moves from translation to "in review"
• Letter of Acceptance (LOA) from China
• We go back to USCIS for a final I-800 paperwork step
• Travel Approval (TA) received from China
• We coordinate our travel and fly out!

Another adopting couple is in China getting their son from little sister's orphanage this week.  They took the time to send some pictures of her yesterday!  This is the first time we've seen her without her trademark hairclip.  Isn't she great?

Checking More and More Boxes...

There has been a lot of progress over the past two months.  We completed all interviews with our social worker, which in turn allowed her to complete our homestudy.  The approved homestudy was submitted to our adoption agency on November 19 and our application to the USCIS was submitted that same day.  Next up is waiting for USCIS to schedule a fingerprinting appointment in Des Moines. 

We also collected and submitted all but one document for our dossier (the package of authenticated/certified documents for China).  The final dossier document will be our USCIS approval, and after this comes in the mail our dossier will be finalized and sent to China for translation.  We're still several months away from travel but we are trusting in God's timing!

A big surprise today was receiving an update from China!  Little sister seems to be doing great.  She's 35 inches tall and around 26 pounds.  She is in great health, has not been ill, and her physical/mental development is reportedly above average.  She can run, jump, and go up stairs.  She started talking about eight months ago.  We were told, "Now she can speak local dialogue pretty well and she can sing and dance with TV."  Time for us to start learning some Cantonese!

We asked about her personality and received this reply:  "She is timid and shy. She is also active with someone she knows well. She can play very well when she likes you." 

Oh, and we also have some new pictures to share!  We can't wait to hold this little one in our arms.

Five Thumbs Up! (or, "Here We Go Again!")

The Adolphs family is dusting off this ol' blog to share some exciting news.  We will be adding another member to our family!  We submitted our application and Letter of Intent (LOI) over the past few weeks, and just today we received our Pre-Approval (PA) from China!  This means we can make this information public, and we have a green light to continue with our homestudy and paperwork trail.

The five thumbs up picture represents our completion of the first document in the whole process on August 22, 2015.  Our stack of papers has already become quite big and there's a long ways to go.

We appreciate your prayers not only for quick completion of the homestudy and dossier prep, but also that God will be preparing each our hearts for this change (especially little sister's).  Our hope is that we'll be traveling early summer 2016 to bring this beautiful little one home!  Oh, and we suppose you'd all like to see some pictures...  :-)

God is good!