First, as of last week (Wed Nov 6) we are finally out of translation (OOT)! We felt like this took sooo long... And it did, in comparison to most families' timelines right now. We kept expecting every week to hear that we were OOT and instead kept hearing "no movement". Waiting is so hard.
I'll try to explain this part of the whole adoption wait. There are so many acronyms, I see people's eyes start to glaze over when I try to explain the process :) I'll try to keep it simple! If you aren't into the details, skip down a couple of paragraphs!! So, we sent in our dossier several months back and were logged in to the system in China (LID). We had been told it would probably be 4-7 months from Log-In Date before we were matched with a child but as you know, we were matched in ONE day! We were LID (logged in) 9/9/13 and received our referral (Sadie's file) 9/10/13. We submitted LOI (Letter of Intent) 9/11/13 and received PA (provisional approval to adopt Sadie) 9/13/13. All in one week!
The next step after PA is LOA. This is the BIG deal that we are waiting on now...our Letter of Acceptance - the formal approval from China for us to adopt this specific child. (It's not really a question of whether we will receive this, but just when). In this LOA wait, there are 3 steps: OOT (when our dossier gets out of translation), review, and matching (when we are officially approved. LOA is granted and sent out at this time). Once you receive LOA, it is typically 2-3 months before travel. Initially we were told that getting LOA could take anywhere from 40-140 days, but with the new database up and running in China, most wait times were on the faster side so we had high hopes of a 40 day LOA wait, especially after being matched so fast! We found out later, though, that this means that our paperwork didnt have that time to start moving through the system prior to matching, which makes our wait on this end a little longer. So where many families are now getting their LOA in 30-50 days or so from PA, we didn't get out of translation until day 54 of our LOA wait. We are now at day 65 and waiting on review.
Waiting has never been my strong point anyway - or Johns, but once we saw our daughter's face and learned a little about her, the wait became so much harder. We are just ready to have her here.
So...that's why we were SO excited last Wednesday 11.6.13 to hear that we were finally Out Of Translation!! This made us feel like things are moving along again! Our steps should be a little shorter and our process a little more predictable now. We've been told that from OOT, it is typically 2-3 weeks until review, then 1-2 weeks until LOA is sent. So with a timeline of 3-5 weeks to LOA and 2-3 months LOA to travel, we are looking at the end of Jan to middle of March when we travel.
You'd think "a little news" wouldn't take 4 paragraphs...
So, the next bit of news is that we have new pictures!!!!!!!!
We made a connection with a sweet family adopting through our agency, and adopting a little boy from the same orphanage that Sadie is in. (Their little boy is sitting next to Sadie in her birthday pictures!) They just returned from China getting their sweet boy this past week. Before they left, they offered to try to see Sadie, get pictures/video/updates etc, and bring her a lovey from us. When they got to the orphanage they were told that Sadie is living in a foster home in a separate village from the orphanage, so they were unable to see her or get any updated information about her. They did leave the toy we sent for her and felt pretty confident it would get to her. We were so disappointed but then a day or two later the orphanage emailed them new photos for us of Sadie!! Such a great surprise and just so nice of them to ask for this for us.
It may sound strange for a few different pictures to be such a big deal, but it is. I knew that it would be hard once we knew who our daughter was but were not able to see her, get to know her, hold her, or have any control over her day to day activities or how she is cared for. But I couldn't imagine before being in this place, what it would feel like. It is crazy how connected you feel to a baby you've never met, but yet so unnaturally disconnected. Like she is yours, you feel it, but you can't get to her and can't even know her yet. There is a longing for her that I never could have described or imagined before or even fully expected. Kind of like when you are pregnant for the first time you know that you will love that baby like crazy, that you will feel something you've never felt before, that it will be amazing...but you can't know how it actually feels until that moment and it still catches you off guard a little bit how different it is from anything you've ever felt and how bonded you feel to this new baby. Well, the feeling is different and the circumstance is different, but the way that you anticipate how you will feel but can never know it until it happens....that's the only thing I can think of to compare/describe it. But instead of it being just all amazing and everything else melts away as you bond with your new infant, there is this connection and love you have for this child but so many questions, unknowns, and never having met her....it's hard to describe. Not sure if that's even making sense or if I am rambling :) But all that to say, anything new, any new photos, news, pieces of information, anything that can make you feel more connected, is amazing!!! So here they are...
Bless her little heart, she looks so hot in this last one to me. They keep them majorly bundled up all the time there from what I have heard!
We are so thankful for this sweet family getting these for us, and I am thankful for God's timing. He has been teaching me about trust and patience, and even just being told we couldn't get any new photos and then receiving these, I can just see Him working in me to show me again that He is in control.
So I mentioned that Sadie is in foster care. This is our last bit of news and it is great news. I'm not sure if she has been with this foster family from the beginning but this is probable with the way the orphanage is set up. This is SO great as far as bonding, attachment, development. We were really happy to hear this, along with the fact that her orphanage is a Half the Sky program (if you are interested here is more info about that http://halfthesky.org/en). So all of this is good news and makes the chances higher that she is being well cared for and nurtured. It is more likely that Sadie will come to us knowing what it is like to live in a family and hopefully having been able to form the attachments and build trust that will help her to attach to us and form trust and bonds with us as her family. Many children in orphanages have difficulty attaching to their adoptive families because they have not had the opportunity to bond to a main caregiver. So this is a huge answer to prayer for us! The hard thing about this is knowing that because of the attachments she has likely formed with her foster parents and the other kids in the foster home, she will probably go through a much harder grieving process when she leaves. We will be taking her from everything she has ever known. She will be scared and everything will be different. This just makes my heart hurt for her. Please pray with us that God prepares her little heart for this transition, and that He prepares and equips us to be what she needs and help her to grieve as she goes through this loss. Also, we have asked our agency to request that the orphanage allow us to visit her foster home. Most families have the option of visiting the orphanage where their child has spent the first part of their life and meet their nannies. However, it would be very rare that a family would be allowed to meet a foster family especially with the foster home in another village apart from the orphanage. For us this would be huge - it would allow us to meet the people who have raised her so far, to ask them questions about her and see her interact with them, to see what the environment was like, and to take photos to be able to show her later in life. Please pray with us that the orphanage allows this!!!
So, our timeline we are looking at now, is probably anywhere from the last week in January through the middle of March that we will be able to travel to get Sadie. Please pray for the shortest times possible from here through the rest of the process so that we can get her as soon as possible!!
One last thing.
With the weather getting colder, we are going to do one order of long-sleeve t-shirts!!! I am excited about them because the company said that we can do them in the yellow and grey that the kids' shirts were in before! We had lots of people ask about adult shirts in this color but it was too many combinations to try to do at once and we had already committed to the others. So if you would like a grey and yellow "Love Never Fails" shirt, comment here or message me on Facebook to tell me what size you need and the address where to send it. You can pay through the donate button under the support tab on this site, or by check. The only color we are doing in this order is the grey with yellow print, but we can do long-sleeve ($20) or short-sleeve ($18) if anyone prefers that. This will be our last shirt order! Thank you all for your support and your prayers!!!
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