God has placed very special friends in our life, who have been instrumental and have been some of the biggest prayer warriors, we've ever encountered! I think it's amazing when God brings special people into your life, whom you've never met and probably never will, yet, they are right there with you, standing strong in faith and standing strong in prayer, every step of the way and cheering with each obstacle that is overcome. Those are angels and Christian discipleship at its truest form! We are so thankful for these special friends. Especially when our most recent adoption, hasn't exactly been met with a lot of accepting approval much less a shared excitement. We've had a variety of reactions from total silence, that literally spoke volumes...a Christian friend who questioned "if we were really sure to have heard God correctly in moving forward with another adoption at this time," to out right asking, "why" and a few other reactions here and there that aren't even worth mentioning. We are excited to bring Elijah home....wait not excited, we are thrilled beyond words to be adding another child to our family and regardless how those around us feel or react, we will continue to adopt as long as God intends for us to adopt. We may stop after this adoption or we may go several more times. I don't know, it's not really up to me....when God speaks, there is no ignoring.
I'm also excited to share that we are very, very close to completing all the requirements for the dossier and the home study. Our physicals are scheduled tomorrow and two very special people have provided us an excellent letter of reference. Once we have these final documents in hand, we can submit them to our social worker, who will complete our home study. YEA!!
Once we have a completed home study, the home study and many other documents will be sent to immigration for our I800 approval. While waiting for the US Government to approve our immigration paperwork, we will send our documents to Austin for the State Seal. When the documents return to us from Austin, we will forward them on to the Chinese Consulate for the authentication. Once all the required documents are authenticated, we can send the documents (and there are many, many documents) to our agency who in turn, will submit all the documents (fondly referred to as the dossier) to China! WHEW! You better believe we will be celebrating BIG time once the dossier is completed and forward to China. It's been months in the making! Please be in prayer with us as we complete the final steps leading toward our dossier.
