It has been a year since we first saw Hailey's face and felt that tugging in our hearts. Wow, sometimes I really can't believe that we are in the adoption process again. I would've never thought that in a year we would have already gone in for USCIS fingerprinting and would be waiting on that approval!! And for an adoption from China no less! It just goes to show what can happen when you are open to and listening to His will in your life! This would not be happening without God! He has opened so many doors for this adoption. He has made things possible that did not seem possible to us! I love it when He reveals His plans and makes things work!
We headed to Albuquerque a couple days ago to the USCIS office to get our biometric fingerprints done early. I was pretty nervous, but because we had done it before without a problem, I wasn't too worried. Little did we know that earlier that morning in the USCIS office, the officer in charge had told the front desk guy that she would not be taking walk-ins that day. She was the only one there to do whatever it is they do besides the fingerprinting, and they were not to accept any people that walked in without an appt. Yikes, I'm glad I didn't know that!! Anyway, I am not sure why he didn't tell us that right when we got there. He said he would have to talk to his supervisor and had us sit down. We waited what seemed like a long time, and then he finally called us over and let us fill out the paperwork. He said she had work to do and would get to us when she could. We ended up waiting about 45 minutes before she called me back. She immediately pointed to the little section on the fingerprint appointment notice that talked about rescheduling and told me I needed to send that back in if we couldn't make the scheduled time. I just said, "ok, yes maam!" Then she proceeded to do my fingerprints and tell me all about her 20 month old grandson. Lol She was pretty nice and I was super thankful she had not chewed me out more! Mark went next, and she told him that they were not going to take walk ins that day. Oh geezo! But she was nice enough to look and see how far away we lived, and her heart was softened for us I guess. :) I tell you what, God has opened so many doors for us during this adoption process! We are just so super thankful!!!
Also, I was able to send our whole dossier off to the Chinese Embassy in Washington D.C. yesterday for them to authenticate. (The dossier for China has an extra step after the Secretary of State certification, which is different than a dossier for Ukraine). That is what we are doing now. Our dossier is complete, we are just waiting on that authentication. Plus our approval from USCIS of course! So that is a good feeling! Once we get that approval and get it certified and authenticated, we will be able to send our dossier to CHINA!!! I can't wait for that to happen!! It cannot happen soon enough! Will you please pray for us for a quick USCIS approval? I called them today to see if we had been assigned an officer yet, and we haven't. :( I did tell him that we were fingerprinted early and he noted that in our file. But I guess nothing will happen if there is no officer assigned. So please pray that we will get an officer and a quick approval! Thank you!!
I couldn't have this post without a pic of our dossier papers before we sent them off. :) I will do an after pic as well, when we get them back from the Chinese Embassy. :)
Here they are, all 12 of them...Now for some cute pics of our girl. The best part, right?!
I hope you had a Merry Christmas sweet girl! Next year you will be home with us celebrating!! We love you little miss Hailey!
2 comments:
Great pictures, she is beautiful. I may be biased because she looks like the 3 year we adopted from Hong Kong. We got the same little lecture when we went in early for fingerprints but this time it didn't help. It took a little over 60 days from when we filed. Hopefully things pick up. All of your other kids are adorable too!
Barb, do you have a blog? I would love to see pics of your daughter and hear about your adoption process. I'm not sure if it is going to help us either to have gone early. I have been hearing lately that it is taking a long time to even get assigned an officer.
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