Adoption Updates

A couple of weeks ago, I laid out the timeline of the last few steps
in our process to adopt our son Davis from China.

Here's an update on what has been accomplished since then.....

DONE - We were cabled as of March 21st and received our letter of notification on March 30th. 1) NVC Cable Letter - USCIS will sent our file to the National Visa Center (NVC) to be cabled to the US Consulate in Guangzhou. We should receive a letter in the mail from the NVC stating that our file has been forwarded in about 10 days. We have to email a copy of this letter to Lifeline.

IN PROCESS - Our Article 5 was dropped off on 4/2 and pickup will be 4/17 (always 2 weeks). 
2) Article 5 approval - Lifeline will forward the NVC Cable letter to their staff in China and Davis' visa application will be delivered to the US Consulate. They will verify all of our approvals and issue an Article 5 approval - has to do with the language of the Hague Convention governing adoptions.

3) Travel Approval Issued - The US Consulate will forward our Article 5 to the CCCWA in Beijing that governs Chinese adoptions and they will begin processing our travel approval (TA).  This is the letter of invitation from the CCCWA that allows us to travel to China and complete the adoption. (This step has been taking around two weeks lately).

4. Consulate Appointment Set - Then we will be able to submit a five dates for consideration for our US Consulate Appointment (CA) in Guangzhou to swear the oath of citizenship on Davis' behalf and have his visa issued for travel to the US. This date will determine when our Forever Family Day will be (when we receive Davis; usually the Monday of the week before your CA) and also when we will travel over to China. None of the travel agents who specialize in international adoption will speak to you about flight arrangements until you have been issued your CA date.

We would covet your prayers that everything goes smoothly with these last few steps, and with one other detail. We have to wait to apply for the travel visas for our passports until after we have set our CA date; normally people apply for those after receiving their Letter of Acceptance (LOA) and many families already have them in hand by now. But because we are both employed by churches as pastors, we fall into a special Chinese visa category of religious workers. Instead of the normal 6-12 month multiple entry visa usually granted to adoptive families, we will only be able to receive a 30 day single entry visa. This means we must plan to get our visas so that we are on a plane to China within 30 days of our visa issue date. In addition, the Chinese consulate in Houston that we must apply through does not offer any expedited processing (unlike many of its counterparts). Getting our visas is certainly possible to accomplish - there is just very little wiggle room in the schedule for any delays.

* If you would like to follow along with our journey to Davis, you can find all of the previous posts related to our adoption process by clicking here, along with information about our timeline and referral.