The Land of Hand

Around 4:00pm on Friday June 22nd the call from Lifeline came in that our Travel approval had arrived.  By Tuesday we will have a date for our consulate appointment and we will be able to book flights and hotels.  It is hard to believe that in just over 3 weeks from now we will be on our way to China to bring Joshua home to become part of our family.

Now that our travel to China seems imminent I have begun the "nesting" phase that most expectant mothers go through.  I think I have reorganized every cabinet in the kitchen and my next project is to clean out the file cabinet and reorganize our spare room into a room that can be used for more than just storage.  I am stockpiling items in the garage for a possible garage sale in the near future.  If that does not happen, I will call the Salvation Army instead and let them empty my garage.  I have also been doing a lot of reading about adoption and attachment.  I have tried a few times to learn a little bit of Chinese but I am still struggling to know anything more that just "boo" which means no and "Ni hao" which is hello.  A dear friend from church is throwing me a shower on Saturday at a Chinese Restaurant.  I will post more this weekend with a couple of pictures from the shower.

On wednesday June 6th we received a phone call from Karla @ Lifeline.  She informed us that our Letter Of Acceptance (LOA)had arrived and it was on it’s way to us.  We received it at 1:45 on thursday.  I drove it straight to Walk Thru so Jason could sign his part, and we could get it right back to LIfeline, so they could send it back to China.  Karla emailed us Friday to let us know they got it back and it was on it’s way.  Now we wait for the last step…….Travel Approval (TA) this is essentialy an invitaion from China to come and adopt your child.  When we get the travel approaval our agency will make the necessary appointments with the officials in China for the finalization of the adoption and we will travel based on the dates of the appointments. 

We are approximately 5 weeks away from meeting our son!!!! 

Thanks again for the prayers.  We ask for specific prayers for Joshua’s foster family that they are preparing him for his adoption as this will greatly help in his transition and attachment to us.