Making progress

It seems like it has taken years to get all our paperwork completed. It has taken us five months to complete the home study and all the dossier documents. We completed our fingerprints for immigration approval yesterday. We are waiting to get our immigration approval which is our last piece of paper. Once we receive the approval, we will overnight it to our adoption agency. The agency will send it to the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C. Once it returns to the agency with Chinese seals, our file will be on its way to China. I cannot even express the joy and excitement that I feel thinking about our paperwork arriving in China. It has been a long road. The home study we had hoped to complete in a month took almost four months to complete. Why the long wait? I honestly have no idea. We could never catch a break. It took six weeks to get an appointment for our physicals. We encountered obstacles at every turn. There were days that I just sat in the floor and cried. Every delay meant more time passing before we could see Nick again. It breaks my heart to think about him just waiting on us to come to China and bring him home. We continue to pray that God will hand walk our file through the upcoming steps of the adoption process. The time frame for the next few steps varies greatly. No one really understands why it takes some families one month for dossier translation and other families three months. I have heard the average wait to get your letter of approval is sixty days... The shortest time frame I have heard is five days and the longest well over a hundred. It is our prayer that our long wait at the beginning of the process will be followed by an expedited time frame at the end. Please pray that God would find favor with us and allow Nick's adoption to progress at record speed. I really miss his sweet smile.