The Sqeaky Wheel

After submitting the new documents to immigration and hearing nothing since Thursday, after calling and calling and emailing repeatedly and finally insisting on speaking to someone higher up--I am THRILLED to report that we got a call from a supervisor telling me that our officer approved our immigration application to bring Jadyn home!! 

In my excitement, I did not remember to ask her what date we were approved, so I would know when to expect the approval in the mail.  I have forgotton worse before.

I was tempted to continue my conversation with her and try to analyze why no one would call me back, and why my officer had to have such a lousy attitude with me, and why she was so friendly--she was genuinely nice, she was not just courteous, but humorous and pleasant and nice.  Anyway, I decided not to "beat a dead horse" and figured she realized he had issues because she was calling me on his behalf.  Done.

This approval will be sent to us and our case will be forwarded to the NVC--National Visa Center.  Once we get confirmation from NVC, we (our agency) will forward Jadyn's visa application packet to the US Consulate in China, who will process her application and then it will get sent to Beijing to be verified that we have done all the aforementioned steps and they will issue travel approval.  Is your head spinning yet?  Keep in mind these are just the last few steps and this whole process has been like this.

While, word of our I800 approval is fantastic news, we have a little ways to go.  I had my heart set on September travel, but it's not looking good at this point.  October is a tough month to travel because of the Holiday and Trade Fair. 

Please pray for smooth paperwork processing for these next few steps!  We know God answers prayers and we are so thankful!

I had a lesson in anxiety a few days back and it went like this:

We can make our plans,
but the Lord determines our steps.

Proverbs 16:9 (New Living Translation)

I'll leave you with that thought for today.

Deb

Care Package and Roadblocks

This is what we sent to Jadyn 2 weeks ago.

It's candy, cookies, a letter to her caregivers--whomever they may be--and a small baby photo album with 5 pictures.

I have heard good things about where she is living, that the nannies do prepare the children well.  How well can you prepare a toddler for her whole world to turn upside down.  Imagine your child's feelings if they were taken away from you at 18 months.  Now, it's not exactly the same, because your child is in a wonderful nurturing environment, however, Jadyn's world is all she knows.  I am trying to prepare myself for a traumatized baby, I know she will be, to at lease some extent.  Words of wisdom:   prepare for the worst, hope for the best.......trusting in God.

The ROADBLOCK we have come up against is related to our I800 application and unreadable copies.  The Chinese documents we (and our agency) received were scanned copies put into a zip file.  They are fuzzy and hard to read--although disagreeing with our US Immigration Entity, they are FINE.  They are like many others who have received approvals with the same type/quality of documents.  This could be fixed in a day, week, or month.  Like it or not, this process has to be completed before we can be invited to travel.  The kicker is that we submitted a sworn statement that these documents were issued from Chinese government and were translated accordingly, apparently in the US that is no longer good enough.  Forgive my cynical attitude, it's only a few weeks so far, but that could lead to a few weeks of me not holding my daughter.  Thanks for letting me vent.