PROGRESS

As many of you know Maya Grace's adoption was riddled with conflicts and delays. The journey to Ally Kate has gone so smoothly and I am thanking God for every step.  We were fingerprinted by USCIS on 9/9 and our agency told us to expect a two month wait for approval.  I was in shock when I pulled our approval out of our mailbox on Friday, 9/20!  Two months was reduced to ELEVEN DAYS!  Since our agency is out of state I made the decision on Monday to do the certification of our documents myself to save more time rather than sending them to the agency.  I took them to our county courthouse yesterday for certification and drove them to the state capital today for certification by the Secretary of State.  (I will explain by those not in the adoption world.  Documents must be notarized.  They have to be certified on county level which is a paper stapled to the front of your document.  This paper documents that "yes" the notary who notarized your document is indeed a notary for the state.  You must go to the Secretary of State who says that "yes" the person on the county level was certified to give her approval. The final step is for the documents to be sent to the Chinese Consulate who says that "yes" these documents are properly certified and they add their paper to the front to "authenticate" the documents. Once all three steps are completed your documents are ready to be sent to China). I  found the local Federal Express office and sent the three documents overnight to the courier who handles documents for the Houston Consulate.  Since we only have three forms and the consulate is closed three days next week for a Chinese holiday I chose to have the documents expedited.  The courier will drop them off on Friday and pick them up on Monday.  FedEx will overnight to our agency and they will be in our agencies hands on Tuesday!  We should be DTC next week! It is so unbelievable that it is happening so quickly.

                                                     The trio holding the completed forms!

We are getting in major planning mode here for the addition to our family!  Our agency had initially estimated travel in Mid-March to Mid-April but with the USCIS approval coming six months earlier than planned we will move that up to a  February/March time frame.

We have asked for an update on Ally Kate but it has not come yet.  We are anxiously awaiting.  We are not allowed to have contact with her at this point.  Once our documents are sent to China we will receive a log-in date.  Once they along with our dossier from Maya Grace are reviewed we will receive a LSC/LOA which is the official approval from China for us to adopt her.  We currently have pending approval.  Once LOA is received we can send her a care package at that point.  We then must submit more forms to USCIS and then a few more steps before China sends travel approval.

As most know this is a huge leap of faith for us financially since we just adopted Maya Grace from China on 12/24/12.   We have been in major fundraising mode.  We are proud people and do not like asking others for help.  As I have said before it is NOT about us.  It is about this little girl who has lived eight years without a family.  We have swallowed our pride.  This is about HER.  She is the same age as my Anneli.  I can't imagine my sweet, precious Anneli living without the love and nurture of  family from birth until this stage of her life.  We can't wait to give Ally Kate the gift of a FOREVER FAMILY! Please pray for us and send your positive thoughts as we travel on this journey to her.  If anyone reading this feels inclined to help us with a donation we would be extremely grateful no matter how small.  We have two accounts set up for tax free donations - Project Hopeful - http://projecthopeful.org/matched-families/campbell-family/  and Reece's Rainbow - http://reecesrainbow.org/63380/sponsorcampbell-2 .  I also have three direct sale businesses to help earn money for our fees - Thirty-One www.mythirtyone.com/35081 , Usborne Books www.w3493myubam.com and Trades of Hope www.mytradesofhope.com/angelacampbell .