800 Approval!

We received our 800 approval today, friend!!

In other words - the US (Homeland Security; US Citizenship & Immigration) *APPROVED* us to adopt our sweet boy!!

Another approval??

You've heard me say "approve" quite a bit haven't you? The biggest and main approvals through this process is first, the approval to adopt from China in general from the US (800A); second - approval to adopt your child from China (known as Letter of Acceptance/LOA); lastly the 800 which is a petition to adopt your specific child from the US side (USCIS)  -- which is what we received today!!! This is the LAST big approval (that is before travel approval)!

These last steps will FLY right by!!  I'd love to be telling you right now we're able to get on the plane Nov.4 (our agency's next travel date for his province), but it looks like we'll be missing that by days (yes, just days!!) -- that's honestly been hard to swallow, and we hate that our baby boy has to wait another month just because of missing a scheduled travel date.

So since we're missing Nov.4, we're looking at Dec.2, and meeting him Dec.5. These are not approved dates, but we don't have any reason to believe we'd miss Dec.2 for sure. We'd be coming home Dec.16th or so -- just in time for Christmas!!! It will certainly go down as the best Christmas we've ever had!

So today marks less than two months to go!! That seems so far away, yet I'm overwhelmed right now with an ever-growing to-do list! Just so much to do, but I'm putting it all in God's hands and trusting He's got control. He's. Got. This.

What's next??

We're currently working on our applications for our Chinese visas. We're also waiting now for the National Visa Center (NVC) to send us a letter stating they've notified the US Consulate in Guangzhou (China - where his adoption will be finalized) that our 800 was issued. This should come by the end of this week. After we receive this, we'll then file the DS-260, which is applying for his US visa. Then we'll wait for our "Article 5" (a notice that the consulate sends to request our travel approval from the CCCWA), then last but certainly not least, we wait for our travel approval from China!!!! We're almost there!!!

Keep on praying!!! It's needed more than ever!! If you haven't stopped to check out our profile on https://www.adopttogether.org/stumpfamily, please check it out! Stay tuned!!