An update to the last post

Did you read the last post? This story gets more miraculous as the day goes on.

Get this - our immigration officer just told me that our fingerprints from our last adoption are still valid and we can use those to get approval. She will have our approval ready tomorrow or Friday. It usually takes 45-60 days to get approval and we will have Valentin's in 12-13 days...I mean c'mon! We are so unworthy of God's favor and yet today He is lavishing it upon us!

It doesn't stop there.

I had intended to do a post next week about the process to adopt from Valentin's country to let everyone know how it was going to work after immigration approval. Turns out our timeline just moved up big time. Here is a brief description of the process - and the thing to keep in mind about the country we are adopting from is that the rules change ALL the time. What is true today could be changed on a whim tomorrow, very unstable adoption program. Anyway, typically when our home study is done we send a document petitioning the government to adopt a specific child (Valentin). The facilitation team submits that and the government issues a date that we can submit our dossier. This date is taking longer and longer these days due to many rules recently put in place (wish I had time to talk about them but suffice it to say a certain organization -UN*CEF- is doing a huge disservice to orphans). Once you have that date you can submit dossier. I believe travel dates are issued typically 2 weeks after submittal (if they approve our dossier) and travel is about 3-4 weeks after that. I could be very wrong but that is my understanding and again it could all change tomorrow.

All that to say that I did not even know the facilitation team was submitting our petition yet since we did not have immigration approval yet. However I learned just a little bit ago that not only did they submit our petition but it has ALREADY BEEN APPROVED and we have a dossier submittal date of Feb 29th.

Ok, are you tracking with me? Our fingerprints are still valid which will allow us to get the last piece of our dossier to Valentin's country just in time for our already scheduled submittal date that we probably should not have had for many more weeks. And just to add to that, Feb 29th?!?! A day that only happens every 4 years?!?!

Really?!?! I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried! I am usually a pretty mellow person, not easily prone to sheer excitement and sensationalism...but today...today I am dancing before my God in amazement!