Don't Be Surprised

Our adoption process cleared another hurdle today. Just 9 days ago, Heather and I had an appointment in Metarie to be fingerprinted so the US Citizenship and Immigration Service could make a determination on whether Heather and I can adopt Eli. We received the approval letter in the mail today.

This step in the adoption process could have taken quite some time. We have heard the horror stories from other families and their dealing with the USCIS. Praise the Lord we did not have any problems so far. Our adoption worker told us that the USCIS process could take several months to complete. We were scheduled appointments 2 weeks after submitting our paperwork and received the approval just 9 days later. Of course, everything else in our case has moved along very quickly so we shouldn't have been surprised when this step went quickly, but we were. Now we are praying that the last step...the court process in Taiwan...would go quickly.

I called our adoption worker, Jill, to tell her about receiving clearance from USCIS. As we said goodbye, Jill said to have a Merry Christmas since I want talk to you again until after the holidays. Join us in praying that she will speak to us before Christmas. Because the next call should be the call to set a travel date.