WAITING FOR OUR "LOA" FROM CHINA

Our agency sent our "LOI," which stands for letter of intent, on April 10th and it arrived in China on April 12th. This document states we are requesting to adopt Gracie and are aware of her mild heart stenosis. When the CCAA, China Center of Adoptions, received it they went and pulled our dossier (official documents that took us & the U.S. from March '06 to August '06 to put together). Every family's dossier, and there are about 20,000 in China currently, has to be given a "logged in" date of when it arrived, then translated, then reviewed, then matched to a child, then give families their referrals in order of when their "log in" date was. Well, our dossier was logged in 9/20/06 and translated shortly after but then has been sitting in a room waiting in line to be reviewed (CCAA is only through reviewing dossiers through 3/31/06). But good news! Since we switched from the "non-special needs" program to the "special needs"/waiting child program then we don't have to wait in the same line for our dossier to get reviewed and then wait again for our referral since we've already received our "referral"! Like I said earlier, when they received our "LOI" they went and pulled our dossier to be reviewed ASAP. It may still be in a line along with other family's dossiers whose baby/child was on a waiting child list too but it is a much shorter line. The average wait time right now for reviewing "special needs" dossiers is about 2 to 3 months from the time they receive the "LOI".
Once they finish reviewing our dossier then they will send our agency our "LOA" which stands for letter of approval. If they have any questions or need more info when they are reviewing our dossier then it could take longer but we are praying for our "LOA" as close to the 2 month mark as possible! This would be around mid-June and then we have to sign it and send it back. Then we will wait again for China to give us permission to travel but this only takes between 1 to 3 weeks to receive. Then, our agency will set up our consulate appointment for the soonest opening they have and our travel will be based around the available appointment. Whew!!! What a process!!!! But we know she is well worth all the work and the wait!!! Realistically, the soonest we can hope to be traveling is around mid-July which would be great! But we just have to keep waiting and be ready to jump on that plane which is what we are trying to do right now. Thank you for all your prayers and please keep them up for us and our sweet Gracie.