It Finally Came!

Hallelujah! We can't believe it! Just last Thursday (right before we left for Louisville) a surprise showed up in our mailbox! We received the APPROVAL LETTER for our orphan petition! This is the document from the Chicago Immigration Office that we thought we wouldn't get for at least 4 more months. It's the oddest thing because their website still says they're processing orphan petitions from November 24 (ours was March). It literally showed up out of the blue! This was the piece of our dossier that we had to have before we sent it into Poland. (Dossier-papers that tell Poland all about us and our intentions to adopt children from their country.)

So what does this all mean for us? It means that whenever we're ready, we can send everything into Poland so that we can be matched with our child(ren)! We still have a few things left to do however. We thought we had 4 months to go so we weren't in a big hurry with anything. We have all the documents we need, but now they all have to be made official by sending them into the state to be apostilled. We're not sure how long this will take but are fairly confident that it won't be more than a few weeks.

We are hoping to have our dossier turned into Poland by late September or early October. Once that is turned in, we could wait anywhere from 4 months to 12 months to be matched with our child(ren). Because we are not being "to picky" about the ages or sex of our child(ren), we're expecting it to go much faster than 12 months. We're hoping to travel in early spring of 09, but we'll just have to wait and see!

Thanks again for all your love, prayers, and friendship! We would be lost without you! God's Blessings!