We have been absolutely amazed at God's control and timing of our process to adopt a Chinese daughter. We completed our home study in record time, bringing Amanda from Nashville to Madrid. She answered a lot of our questions and eased our worries about he process. We enjoyed her company and she recommended our family move forward.

From here we applied to the US Government with the I800-A application. This is the process of asking the US Govt to approve us to adopt a foreign child that will become a US citizen once the adoption is finalized (when we receive her in China). We were told this would take 2-3 months to process and approve. We submitted our documents and started praying, specifically asking God for a miracle. On occasion I would specifically ask God that the pile our papers were sitting in would accidentally be knocked off the desk and resorted closer to the top of the pile. You start praying crazy things when your child is involved. ;) I have no idea if this is what happened or not, but God heard my crazy begging.

On Saturday, June 13, my mom sent me a text that our I800A application had been approved. We had been sitting around chatting with Tom, Dixie, Emma and Madison before they headed to the airport for a quick trip to Italy that night. We all screamed and squealed with joy. We received our approval in the mail in record time, a couple days shy of just 1 month! Our agency, again, was shocked at the pace we were flying through the process and the only explanation we had was that God was in control and we were moving at His pace.

The next step was to send in the approval to our agency and wait for it to be authenticated in Washington DC. This was the final document to complete our dossier, with this paper authenticated all the documents (dossier) together would be sent to CCCWA in China. Our dossier was mailed on Tuesday, July 7. It was to arrive in China on Friday and be put in the queue for registration and translation.

Our dossier was logged in on Wednesday, July 15 with CCCWA. This is a huge step because now we could be matched with a child at any time!!