Dossier Details

Dossier: A collection of required documents presented in support of a petition to adopt a child overseas. It becomes the foreign country's paper representation of whom the adopting family is, and it is used to "approve" the family adopting a child from their country. The specific paperwork may vary from country to country.

As of today, April 3rd, 2008, our Dossier is . . . done. D-O-N-E. We are still shaking our head at the fact that the guy who was handling the mailing of our package decided to take the Fed-Ex envelope and stick it into a UPS envelope and then not tell us he did that. But, God was with it. And now, it is with Leah.

Leah, our family coordinator called me yesterday. Not only did she get our Dossier, but we had everything in it we needed. She said that most likely, it will be leaving for China on Wednesday of next week. We'll have a tracking number to watch its travel to Beijing.

We will get an email giving the names and contact information of other individuals from America World whose Dossier is going to China in the company of ours. I am assuming that those individuals become a "team" of sorts as we will most likely have the same or close to the same LID (log-in-date) and will possibly travel together to China. I gave Leah my permission to add us to the list. Leah informed me that we will have an April LID. The exact date is yet to be determined.

That date becomes especially important as you wait for your turn to come. As of last week, I believe they had processed all LID's in October of 2006. You therefore see how far behind they are. There are nearly 1.5 years of LID's in front of us in line. They are estimating the wait time at 27 months. However, the current trend is that the wait time will continue to rise every month (currently every one month that you wait, your wait time is estimate to go up about 1/2 to one full month.) If this trend were to continue, our wait time could be four years. We are not worrying ourselves with this. We continue to trust that the perfect daughter is out there, and we will let God lead our LID and the wait time.

This amount of wait indicates that it is nearly improbable that we will get to meet our China daughter before we leave Eglin AFB. This is sad for me. I have such wonderful friends here, and I would hate for them to not get to meet her. (And yes, she actually, already has a name -- unless our hearts change big time before then.) But again, let go. Let God.

Another item of note. If we are living overseas when our LID comes around, the adoption can still proceed although things will get a little more complicated. Our home study is one issue, but that can be worked out if we can find a licensed agency in the country we live in. Another one of those complications is the fact that we would need to fly into the U.S. after leaving China, first. So, for example, if we were living in Japan, we'd have to fly to China, pick up child, then fly to the U.S., then fly back to China. Some people choose to go to Hawaii in order to prevent coming all the way back to the U.S. Who knows what we will do by then. That's a long ways away.

Oh, and also, our agency will require an update to our home study upon the adoption of our little May Baby. (I was just thinking while in the shower. What if he is born in April? :) The good news is that they normally do this when the new addition is about six months old. At this point, it would be about time to update our home study for the China adoption as well. (That has to be done yearly for a nice little sum of money.) We found out this week that our current home study coordinator, has resigned. So we will have someone new. We are hoping she doesn't have to travel all the way from Orlando to help cut down the costs of her travel.

So. I think that is all there is to update you on. Now we wait to find out our LID. Most likely, we won't find out what the date is until later this summer. However, when we find out the date, it will most likely be a date in April.

As always, I'll keep you posted.