FDL, PA and DTC

FDL

We stopped at the mailbox on the way to Christmas eve services. Molly looked through the stack of mail to see if our Favorable Determination Letter (from the US government) had arrived, and we were disappointed, again, not to see it.Then, after church, I was going through the mail, and there, stuck behind some junk mail, was an envelope from the US Citizenship & Immigration Service. Our FDL HAD arrived...on Christmas eve!!!

The expected timeline for our FDL was 8-10 weeks, and it arrived in 8.

The day after Christmas we got our last documents notarized for our dossier, and I took everything to the Secretary of State's office to be certified and then to Kinko's to make six copies of the whole dossier.

That night we packaged it all up and Fed Ex-ed it to AGCI. This was a big milestone - a lot of time, sweat, and a few tears - not to mention a good chunk of money - went into what really was a rather unassuming bundle of papers which easily fit, along with the six copies, into a Fed Ex "Medium Box."



PA

On January 2, AGCI received our Pre Approval notice from the China Center of Adoption Affairs. This means that the CCAA had reviewed our Letter of Intent and information sheet and approved us to be Leah's family. PAs normally take 6-8 weeks, and ours was just under 7. The exciting thing about receiving our Pre Approval, other than the fact that both the China and US governments thought we were qualified to do this, was that we could begin sending Leah packages and hopefully getting more updates.

The next day, waiting for me on my email at work, was this “Verse of the Day:”

For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?...--Isaiah 43:19, NLT



DTC

We got the call from Tiffany at AGCI on January 24 that our dossier had been translated, authenticated by the Chinese Consulate, and sent off to China. We were now officially "Dossier-To-China."