The Long Road

Our process is taking a bit longer since we were "surprised" by our referral. Had we know it was coming we would have been working on all the things we needed to be ready! So this is what the process looks like and what we have accomplished so far:

• Referral and Letter of Acceptance Received-completed February 2012
• Hague Home Study -Completed March 2012
• File for I-800A with USCIS-March 2012
• I-800A Approval-May 21, 2012
• I-800 Provisional Approval Received-Waiting
• Receipt from National Visa Center-Waiting
• Consulate Package sent to China-Waiting
• Article 5 letter issues by Consulate -Waiting
• Travel Approval Received-Waiting

We still have some waiting to go. There is no way to speed up the process or believe me I would! Most things left can take anywhere from 2-8 weeks each. So right now it looks as though we won't travel until the fall. We will have about a two week notice before travel. We know it is all in God's time as it has always been but it is very frustrating to know our girl is there waiting on us! As the wait continues we know that God is in control and His timing is perfect!

All About Lucy Grace

Lucy Grace was found on the steps of the Yifeng Orphange in Jiangxi, China on September 12th, 2011. She was named Lu Cheng Zuhang and is a healthy baby! We don't know yet if she is in foster care or the orphanage. She was 11. 6 pounds and was 56 cm long in November. We have not gotten any updates on her size since then but hope to before we leave to meet her! Below are the pictures we received with her referral.

From The Beginning

This blog is for me to keep up with our journey to Lucy. I want to document her story and be able to share our adventures when we go to China. I am going to document things on here so I don't forget and we can have a record of all her story. If you know our story you can skip this post!

The journey to Lucy Grace started in January of 2006. Allen and I decided we wanted to grow our family through adoption. I felt really strongly that we were suppose to adopt through China and after attending some workshops Allen agreed. We started the long process of gathering all the documents for our dossier to go to China. We finally completed all the paper work and were logged in on August 15th, 2006 and the long wait began. When we began the process it was about a year long wait but by the time our paperwork was logged in the wait had been extended to about 18 months.However, the wait eventually grew to a five year wait! We were willing to wait on God's time and we spent this time enjoying and focusing on  Peyton. 

Through the wait I began to wonder if we were doing the right thing and questioned is this where we are suppose to adopt from? As we continued to wait we occasionally thought of changing our choice to another country or to adopt here. However, every time we talked about changing to another country, I felt God saying wait. So we did for a while.
 Then in October of 2008 we got a call from our agency about a birth mom searching for a family. Our agency asked if we would consider putting in a scrapbook to see if the birth mom would be interested in us adopting her baby. Allen and I felt a door had been opened and we should see what would happen. Well, that door opened and led us to our precious gift, Madison. We were overjoyed when we were picked and it was unreal when Madison was placed in our arms in April 21st, 2009! We had no doubt God had picked her to be in our family. After Madison's adoption was complete we were asked if we wanted to continue the wait for China. We discussed it and really would love to have another baby but were not sure financially if we could afford the fees again. So we said we would take our name off the list. However, God had a bigger plan!

On February 10th at 5:00 I got a call that our referral had come through and we had a baby girl waiting for us in China! Imagine our surprise and delight at the news of having another gift from God! Allen and both knew that we were pursuing the adoption and we would be travelling to China!