Relief

Visa applications were sent out by FedEx yesterday.  

Our family photo album that we can send to Natalie was finished today, and her lullaby CD was purchased.  

Stress level is going down and life is good!
  

Visa Applications

This week I have been working on our visa applications to China.  For some reason this felt like the most stressful thing I have done in this adoption process.  It shouldn't have been that difficult, but I was about to scream my head off a few times!!!  I think the added stress of Christmas right around the corner and my classes I am teaching just intensified the stress.  With adoption papers, you always want to get everything mailed off as soon as possible because you never know how long the wait time is going to be. 

In order to apply for visas, we have to hire a courier to take them into the Chinese Embassy in Washington D.C. (just like we did with our dossier papers) because you can't just mail them in.  As I was trying to decide which courier to use, and reading Holt's instructions, I was getting so confused because they each said something different.  I thought one said that you could hand write the applications, so I did that for all three of ours (Chad, me, my mom) only to find out that they had to be typed.  These are the kinds of papers where everything has to be just right or China might reject them, so I think I quadruple checked everything I did.  We also had to go get another set of passport pictures taken.  Apparently the ones we took 7 months ago were too old.  Good grief. 

I had everything ready to go yesterday, hoping to get to FedEx before the big winter storm hit.  There was one last document that I was waiting on, a formal invitation letter from the Chinese government to show that we had a reason to be in China at that time.  I did not end up receiving that until last night due to the time differences in the work days between here and the west coast.  I was so frustrated that I could not get out of the house to go send them off due to the blizzard.  Chad does not understand that, he thinks there is really no difference between sending them one day versus the next, or even waiting until after Christmas.  He is a little paranoid that they will get lost in the massive amounts of packages and mail going out this week, and it does make you nervous since you are sending your passports with it.  What he doesn't understand is the huge relief I have just getting those things out of my hands and my house so that I don't keep looking at them and stressing over the details.  I keep getting them out and looking over everything again, like the boogie man came in and stole some of my papers during the night.  :)  I am heading out later this afternoon to GET IT DONE. 

Fortune Cookies

When we ate our fortune cookies after dinner last night, none of the fortunes were really all that great.  On the back of each of them, there was an English word given, along with the Chinese version of that word so that each of us could learn a little Chinese. Here are the words that each of us got:

Luke:   LEARN CHINESE - TV   (this is actually very appropriate!)

Logan:  LEARN CHINESE -  Living Room

Jenna:  LEARN CHINESE - Bowling

Tera:  LEARN CHINESE - Family

Chad:  LEARN CHINESE - Daughter  


Chad thought it was amazing that out of all the words there are, that was the one he got!  I have to agree. 

LOA Arrived

Holt called with the good news that we received our LOA today!!!!!  Once we were matched with Natalie on October 31st, we submitted a LOI (Letter of Intent) to China stating our intent to adopt her.  After that, we were told that we would have to wait 1-4 months to receive our LOA (Letter of Acceptance) from China, approving the match and all of our paperwork.  I read a lot of stories on Holt's China blogs about the length of time that others had waited for their LOA, but ours came in 6 weeks!  This was a major factor in determining when we may be able to travel, and now they are saying that we should go in early MARCH.  For the first time in this entire process, I feel like things are going really fast and I am thinking I better start getting a little more prepared for her.  

Tomorrow once I receive our LOA from FedEx, I will be submitting our I-800 application to U.S. Immigration.  Once we receive the approval from them, Holt sends that document to China and our final travel approval processing begins.  We will soon be applying for our visas into the country, and hiring a courier in Washington to personally take the applications into the Chinese Embassy and get more authentications. 


We are so excited to see light at the end of the tunnel now!  I can't believe that we will be with Natalie when she turns 2 on March 25th. Amazing!

New Pics

Video of Natalie

National Adoption Awareness Month

Below is an email that I received from Addie Sanchez, a friend of mine who is adopting from China as well.  I thought it was really interesting and decided to post it here, in the spirit of National Adoption Awareness Month. 

Orphan Statistics

It is estimated there are between 143 million and 210 million orphans worldwide (recent UNICEF report.)

The current population of the United States is just a little over 300 million… to give you an idea of the enormity of the numbers… (The current population of Russia is 141 million)

Every day 5,760 more children become orphans

2,102,400 more children become orphans every year in Africa alone 

Approximately 250,000 children are adopted annually, but… 

Each year 14, 505, 000 children grow up as orphans and age out of the system by age sixteen

Each day 38,493 orphans age out

Every 2.2 seconds another orphan ages out with no family to belong to and no place to call home

In Russia and the Ukraine, studies have shown that 10% – 15% of these children commit sucide before they reach age eighteen

These studies also show that 60% of the girls become prostitutes and 70% of the boys become hardened criminals 

Another Russian study reported that of the 15,000 orphans aging out of state-run institutions every year, 10% committed suicide, 5,000 were unemployed, 6,000 were homeless and 3,000 were in prison within three years…

In a perfect world, there would be no need for adoption. Biological families would stay together.  Children would be raised by loving parents or grandparents and remain in their homeland, surrounded by their culture and connected to their roots tangibly.  Obviously, these statistics illustrate that we do not live in a perfect world.  Adoption is not the answer for solving the underlying issues of poverty and disease and famine and war.  It won’t stop the cycle of more children becoming orphans.  It is a life-line thrown out to a precious few… it rescues a small percentage from the going over the falls.  

It can be difficult to allow ourselves to really think about these statistics and what they represent.  Its easy to respond numbly and see the statistics in terms of thousands or millions… but when we allow ourselves to become personally involved and risk the heart-grief that follows awareness, they become more than mere statistics… they become real children with real hearts that ache for their parents and real bodies that hunger for care.  These precious children need advocates.  They need men and women willing to make a difference… willing to stand in the gap and act on their behalf.