dossier update...

We had a conference call with our newest social worker last week (there have been several changing of the guards during this sojourn of ours). Maternity leave, life, etc. No worries. We understand.

Let's cut to the chase: she said our dossier will be submitted to China and we'll get our pre-approval (PA) in three to four months after that. Our travel approval (TA) will come about two months after that. We'll travel a month or so after we get our travel approval.

3 (or 4) + 2 + 1 = 6 (or 7)

It's lookin' like at least six months, y'all, before we'll travel to get James. Have I mentioned that I'm not a patient person by nature? Okay, just checking. Have I mentioned that this process has been oh-so-very good for me? He is definitely cultivating patience in me.

I was a little bummed, but that quickly passed when our conversation somehow turned to our immigration approval (remember that USCIS, I-800, thingy?). Yeh, well. We haven't gotten our approval yet. No need to fret -- it takes 60 to 90 days. (We filed ours on May 12th). But I started to fret when our social worker sounded perplexed and said we can't submit our dossier until that comes in.

Deafening silence.

"I thought we were mailing our dossier to you tomorrow morning and were told it would go out with the batch next week?"

Did you catch that? Yes, all those times I asked you guys to pray that our dossier would arrive to our agency on week 5, day 2...well, that's right now!

She says that approval is supposed to be part of our dossier. We then explain to her that the I-797 (Notice of Action) is part of our dossier and we were told to have that notarized, certified and authenticated. She says she doesn't believe we're talking about the same thing and asks if I can scan it and email it to her (sure thing, no problem). I then explain to her that before we had a single document certified by the Commonwealth of Virginia and before any of our dossier was sent off to the courier in DC, we were asked to send copies of all the documents to the 'dossier specialist' with our agency so she could review them all and make sure everything was accurate because she didn't want us to unnecessarily certify or authenticate anything and we certainly didn't want to miss something. She gave us the go ahead, so we proceeded to put all the documents through all the required channels.

We wrap up our call. I email her the document.

JD comes in the room and we start talking about this whole situation. I tell him how frustrated I'll be if we're missing a vital part of our dossier and it now can't be submitted -- missing the batch that goes out next week!

The situation would be this:

Wait another couple of weeks to get our immigration approval (dossier sits while we wait). Receive approval document in the mail. Get it notarized. Take it downtown to be certified by Secretary of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Send it to our courier in DC. They take it to the State Department for certification and then on to the Chinese Embassy for authentication. All this could take many, many weeks total. Going through all these channels again for one document.

At this point, JD's placating me by telling me we need to prepare ourselves that our dossier is not complete without this document and will not be sent to China next week.

If you've been following along through this process you know that I struuuuggle with this kind of stuff!

And my husband who can be oh-so-sweet (who turns on the calm when I'm on the verge of losing mine) almost makes it worse. So you know what he says?

"Honey, do you want to pray about it?"

Ya know what I said?

"No, I don't."

Okay, so I had a smurk on my face. But, y'all, you know how it is when your spirit is literally battling it out with your flesh! I did not feel like doing the right thing. I did not feel led. I did not feel drawn to humbling myself before the Lord. I felt like screaming at someone. I wanted to hold someone accountable for not paying attention! For misleading us! For causing us to think we'd jumped through all the hoops and we made it!

So JD comes over and sits in front of me and says he's going to pray that somehow we can submit our dossier. I asked him if he would please just pray for me to be forgiving, patient and full of peace around this situation. He grinned and says coyly, "I was going to pray for that too."

Grrr.

So, we pray.

I kid you not...

My email dings the minute we finish.

There's a reply from our social worker. She says she talked to the program director and the bad news is that the document we have from USCIS (the I-797) is not the official approval (yet) and we have to wait for that. But the good news is that she was told that they can go ahead and submit our dossier to China and it can be in line to be reviewed while we wait for our immigration approval! Woot! Woot!

I was reading the email out loud choking back tears! (This process is making me into such a cry-baby!). JD and I just threw our heads back and laughed! I mean, seriously.

So, our dossier should be on it's way to China by the end of this week! Like any day. I can hardly believe it.

We will get a log-in date (LID) and be working towards our pre-approval! And, yes, we will have to take that one document and send it through all the painstaking channels our other documents went through, but that's fine at this point. We just want our dossier to get in line so we can get to James.

Thank you, Lord, for how you answer prayers and hear every one!