DTC!!!

We are officially DTC!!! That's adoptionese for Dossier to China!!!

In other words, all divisions of the United States government have officially approved us to adopt, and all our paperwork is on it's way to the Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs in Beijing. It will be hand-delivered on Monday, and a few days after that it will be officially "Logged In" to their system.

In practical terms this means that we will be eligible to lock the file of any child that becomes available on the shared list of Waiting Children. Up to this point we have only been able to lock the files of children who have been on the list for 30 days or more, and though there are more than a thousand children on the list, they are all boys or girls with more involved special needs than we believe God is calling us to add to our family dynamic.

I believe that sometime in the next 1 to 3 months, a little girl will appear on the Waiting Children list who is meant to be our daughter. Please pray with us that God will make this very clear when it happens!

Progress!

After more than a year of detours and stalls, our Homestudy has been approved by US Immigration! Finally we can submit our information to China, and we are leaps and bounds closer to our daughter!

What next? Once our dossier is accepted by China (this is called a Logged In Date or LID), our agency will watch the current and new lists of Waiting Children for a girl that fits our qualifications and family. They will present us with a file of information on a child, and if it seems the Lord is saying she is our daughter, we will reserve her file and seek permission from China to adopt her. At that point we will travel within 1 to 3 months to get her, spending 2-3 weeks in China.

Yay - we are one huge step closer to actually having our daugher home!