Fingerprints!!

Yesterday, Mom & Dad went to the INS office to have their fingerprints taken. Our I-600A was sent to them over a month ago, and now we're waiting for our social worker to send our homestudy to INS so we can receive our I-171H.. or approval from the government to adopt an orphan from a foreign country. The discouraging news is that we received a letter saying that our approval could take anywhere from 2-4 MONTHS to complete! With our other two adoptions, our approvals were sent within two weeks. We really don't have two or even four more months to fool around with. Asher's orphanage is located very close to N. Korea and he is need of speech therapy. I'm hoping that this was just one of those conservative letters, and that they'll be able to get the approval to us sooner.

I feel really bad because we haven't gotten much done since before Christmas! Most of us were all sick the week before Christmas and then Dad & I were in Honduras for five days. But really, everything that we need is being done my someone else at the moment: Mom's employment letter, Police Clearances, Homestudy.. and that's it! These documents are all being processed by our social worker, so we're really only waiting on her.

We're still waiting for Pre-Approval from China as well. Today is day 37 of our wait for PA. I'm hoping it comes a lot sooner than Esther's did! (Back in the summer of '05, our PA came after THREE months of waiting!) The good news is that several PA's have recently been issued for families needing Family Size Waivers (FSW's) including one family who's LOI went to China after ours! I'm hoping our PA will be on it's way soon... but it's all up to China!

So.. that's just an update on our paperchase. Oh how I long for the day when we can finally say we are DTC!!! I wonder when that will be! I'm HOPING for late February.. but at this point.. I don't even want to guess! I'm just hoping to be in China before school starts in August!! Preferably, I'd like to travel before June because we'll be travelling to Maryland then for my cousin's wedding. Wouldn't it be funny to show up with an extra kid in tow? (Some of our family members don't know about Asher yet.. we plan to tell them shortly before we travel. Most think we're crazy anyways, so it spares us from all the explosive comments we'll probably receive!) For now we continue to wait and pray for our sweet Asher daily!

"But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint." Isaiah 40:31