More Progress

This is a great week on the adoption front! On Monday, the 10 documents we sent to Austin for Secretary Of State Certification came back, so they are now ready to go to the Chinese Consulate for authentication! Also, today was our fingerprinting appointment for immigration. It was so simple! We had an appointment at 9:00 AM. We got to the local immigration office a few minutes before 9:00 and were completely out of there by 9:05! Talk about a wonderful experience with a government agency! A bit out of the ordinary, but hey - we'll take it! My adoption agency asked me to notify them when our fingerprints were done (which I did this afternoon) and they are going to send another e-mail to immigration to let them know that our prints are now in the system so they can move forward with our approval. Keep praying that immigration will issue our approval paperwork quickly! It is the last step in our process.

Today we also got a slew of passport photos taken. We each need three for the dossier. I have no idea what for...we also have to have 11 snapshots of us. Some just the two of us, some of our family, some with other people...We still need one or two more with other people that we are going to get when we have our church small group at our house. We really didn't have when we needed because usually one of us is behind the camera and China requires that we both be in all the pictures!

I am going to go to Houston soon to take the 10 documents we got back from Austin to have them authenticated. I wish Jerry could go with me, but I will stay with my brother and sister-in-law, which will be nice. It takes about a week, so we'll have time to just hang out. When that is done, we mail it all to our adoption agency!! It will be an almost complete dossier - missing only our immigration approval! The end is actually in sight...it has been so much work that it is hard to believe we are getting close to the end! Keep praying!