Dear Blog Friends,

For the last several weeks, we have had no news. We completed our homestudy and spent several weeks having it reviewed. This process took longer than expected. Finally, though, we sent off for USCIS approval. This is the approval from the American government to immigrate our children from China. Then we waited again. A letter from USCIS came stating that everything looked alright after the preliminary review. Whew. That meant very little to us, but at least it wasn't bad news.

A week passed. On Wednesday we received our finger-printing appointment letters in the mail. The appointments were scheduled for the week we are on vacation many hours away from the office we must go to. Thankfully, my husband took over and called USCIS to reschedule (I personally was opting for just missing vacation, but he is braver than I). They told us we could come any day. We went this morning nearly two weeks before our scheduled appointment. Those are two weeks of extra time we need. I am thankful we could go early. Tensely, I am counting the days until August 7th, the date China has given us by which we must have all of our paperwork in China.

Even though I know there isn't anything on anyone's record, it still it nerve-wracking to have our history reviewed by the federal government, especially when two boys in China are depending on us. If anything goes wrong, it affects Daniel and Matthew who are nervously waiting for Mama and Baba just as we are nervously waiting to go get them.

On the other side of things, my two youngest are laboring faithfully to raise money so they can go to China too. The older ones want to go, but, unless we travel before September (which is humanely impossible), college and work will prevent this. Julia and Joshua are selling things on Amazon and Craigslist and doing chores around the house. Julia also keeps us stocked with printed pictures of Daniel and Matthew to hang around the house. It is hard, even with the pictures, to wrap my head around the fact that these two are our sons.

Please pray that we will receive our approval quickly. This step in the process can take as long as three months, three months we don't have to spare.