Moving Forward

Last Sunday, Dec. 29, Veldon and I celebrated our 23rd anniversary. It was a rather simple celebration, we went to breakfast at Cracker Barrel and did a little shopping and headed back to the rented house we were sharing with my parents and my sister's family in Gulf Shores, AL.

The next morning we received an email from our sweet SW, Liz, who informed us our status with the CCCWA had changed from "reviewed" to "match reviewed". Our dossier went to China in Oct. and we were officially logged into the CCCWA on Nov. 7.  After log in you wait for your LSC, Letter Seeking Confirmation, from China, but while you wait there are several steps. First, you are translated, then you change from translated to "reviewed", after being reviewed you change to "match reviewed" which means you should be just days from receiving the LSC.  Ten to twelve weeks after that little letter comes you travel to receive your child.  The really good news about China is that the process is so very predictable, except in some very small areas.  From LID (log in date) to LSC you hear of families waiting 90+ days or as little as 25 days.  So if there's frustration in the waiting, it's pretty short term...which really is good news.  Our wait was 53 days. :)

The Friday before we received this status change email from Liz I was kind of down.  We had been waiting for over six weeks and it was wearing me down. For some reason I didn't give much thought to being translated or reviewed and when we received those email status changes I was pleasantly surprised, but I couldn't seem to get my mind off the final step...I guess because it was the final step.  

Needless to say we were thrilled with the status change. I quickly fired an email back to Liz asking if we were looking at days or a week or so to get the LSC.  She called me a couple hours later and said "To answer your question, you will wait a few hours.  The LSC just came in the mail!!"  YAY!!  Liz had been on vacation after Christmas and wasn't at WACAP to check if our status changed, apparently it did while she was out.  Oddly, I'm thankful we missed that last update. I'm glad the wait for the LSC was only hours and not days. It's very nice to know you're making progress, but sometimes it's nice to just be surprised.

All that to say for our 23rd anniversary God gave us our 5th child.  He's 3 years old and will be very close to 4 when we get there. He's beautiful and loved and doesn't even know he has a family.  Next week we'll be sending him a care package with a family photo book introducing him to our family.  We pray we can travel in mid-March...that would be such a blessing, but we have learned through long waits and very difficult life circumstances that God's timing and His way are always right.  

I guess since our time is close I need to start adding more to this blog. Then maybe some day he'll be able to see that he was loved before he even knew it.