Two Bits of Good News

It's been a long time—much too long—since I've posted here, and I hope it won't be this long before I post again. We have two pieces of good news to share today:

1. Our LSC (Letter Seeking Confirmation) has been issued from China and is on our way to us! This means that our process is still moving forward. Even though China has already pre-approved us to adopt Jonathan, we will be officially matched with Jonathan once we sign and return the LSC. Our agency had been hoping it would be issued before Chinese New Year, and we barely squeaked in before that deadline, as that holiday is this coming Monday. Praise God for this!

2. We got word last week that we were approved for a $2,500 matching grant through God's Grace Adoption Ministry! That was a HUGE encouragement to us, as we still need a lot of money to bring Jonathan home. If you'd like to help us reach that $2,500 goal (with GGAM's matching portion, this could result in a total of $5,000 for our son's adoption), you can go to their support page. Just be sure to select our names in the Who would you like to help? field. (We're listed as Greg & Kristie Godwin- Ohio.)

Kristie has continued to research items (books, stress-relief objects, etc.) that might help Jonathan with his transition to our admittedly crazy family. She might have more to say about that sometime later. For now, we're thanking God for the LSC and the matching grant. We're still working on other grant applications, and we'll keep you posted on those as we hear back.

Greg

DTC!!

I meant to post this a few days ago, but with the craziness of the holidays, I didn't get a chance to update everyone. Our dossier is finally on its way to China!! After so many weeks of fighting for the papers that we needed, our completed dossier was mailed out on Tuesday. That was two days past our deadline, but the Chinese officials agreed to grant us a few days grace, so everything is fine. We are thanking and praising God that he moved all of the obstacles and allowed us to continue Jonathan's adoption. The hardest part of the adoption is now behind us (except for continued fund-raising), and now we wait for China. As we celebrate Christmas this year, it is hard to know that Jonathan is so far away, but this will be the last Christmas that he ever has to spend alone. As always, thank you all for your support.

Immigration Approval

Wonderful news! Our agency contact called us tonight to tell us that we got our Immigration Approval! We are so excited. Thank you all for your prayers! We had a bit of a scare when our agency contact told us that we had forgotten two forms when we mailed our papers to China. We dropped everything we were doing, ran home and found them on Greg's desk, and overnighted them to our agency in Hawaii. We still aren't quite sure how we missed those when we sent everything else, but the important thing is that we are back on track with that now. Please keep praying that we do not hit any delays in the Authentication process. As long as we don't run into any problems, we should meet our deadline to send our papers to China!! Again, thank you so much for your prayers, and please don't stop praying!

We got it!

I want to share a huge item of praise from today. We got the letter from my doctor!! Greg picked it up and sent it off to our agency. Now please keep praying that we get immigration approval soon. Thanks for all the prayers and support.

More Drama

We are still having a terrible time getting those last few documents for our dossier. Greg's birth certificate arrived this morning, and now it is on its way to our agency. But we still need the letter from my doctor. A midwife in the same practice had said she was willing to help us with this, but then had a family emergency and had to leave the state! I can't believe how many obstacles we are hitting with this one letter. We have been trying to get this since June! Please pray that we will be getting this soon. We need to have this tomorrow! We are running out of options.

A brief update

We have a little bit of news about Jonathan's adoption, so I want to give everyone and update and ask for more prayer. Many of the pieces have come together since our last update. We did (finally) get the new version of our home study and send that on to USCIS. Our agency had their ability to notarize and authenicate documents reinstated, so we do not have to go to Columbus or mail things to D.C. We have managed to recollect most of our documents (even though they didn't have to be notarized, most of them were considered "expired" from China's perspective since the process is taking so long). And God has provided all of the money that we need for this step. We recieved a very generous donation and a grant, and that covers the entire fee required to submit our dossier, plus a littl bit left over for our next step. We are thanking and praising God for all of these things.

But there are still a few huge obstacles in our way, and we need your prayers as we work to overcome these. We still need three documents in order to submit our dossier, and we need them very soon. The first is our immigration approval. We have submitted everything for that and are just waiting for USCIS. The second is Greg's birth certificate. Greg's father is picking that up for us tomorrow and will send it to us. The third is the letter from my doctor. No matter how hard we try, we do not seem to be able to get this letter. I don't understand why this is so difficult right now, but we have to have this letter. Please join us in praying that we will get this in time to get our documents to China. 

Sometimes this seems impossible to us, but we know that all things are possible with God. We are praying that He will bring our son home to us.

Discouraged!

The last few weeks have been very discouraging for us. As you know, we had waited for months to get our completed Home Study, and as soon as we had that, we submitted our form to the US Department of Citizenship and Immigration Services. We then heard back from them that they needed additional information from our Home Study agency. We were shocked and confused. We had never heard of them asking for this information before. We contacted our adoption agency so that they could help us figure out exactly what CIS wanted from us. Then they explained to our Home Study agency that they needed to write one additional paragraph at the beginning of our homestudy. They even helped with the wording of this paragraph. As far as we know, the Home Study agency has not finished the update they needed to do, and now the woman who was handling this for us us out of the office all week. We are frustrated and discouraged by the fact that they do not seem to understand the urgency here. Then, we found out last week that there has been a change to the requirements for our paperwork, and the majority of our forms will have to be redone. This is not our adoption agency's fault, and they are doing everything they can to help us, but this is still terrible news. All of our papers are due in China by December 13th, and I don't know how we can possibly have them all redone and submitted in time for that. We are going to do our very best, and pray that God will give us speed. Also, we are still short of the funds that we need to submit our dossier, and we have to have that very soon now. We have submitted our first grant application, and have started on a second, so please pray that God will bless us on that front as well. It all feels pretty dark and hopeless right now, but we know that all things are possible with God, so we trust Him to make this happen.