Our agency did receive the hard copy of our LOA on Monday (May 18th) and over night mailed it to us. I already had a copy of it by email so I was able to send off our I-800 packet yesterday afternoon (May 19th) via over night mail to immigration. Then when I got home and we were eating dinner, the doorbell rang! The Fed Ex man thought he was going to get away with a drop and run, but we asked him if he'd be so kind to let us get a picture of him with the package since we've done this for Lena and Reid's LOA as well. He was a good sport about it!
We signed it, took a copy, and a few pictures of it and it went back out in the mail back to our agency today.
This morning we woke up to two pictures of Macie that were taken on April 27th.
She is growing up and getting so big- I barely recognized her! Except her eyes of course- I'd recognize them anywhere. ;)
We could use some prayers too. We wanted to keep this a bit of a secret, but at this point having more people praying is better than keeping a secret. Back in the fall, our home study agency approved us to adopt two children. If you know us well or have heard me talk about our home study agency, you'd know that this is HUGE! They rarely approve families for two. We did some extra paperwork for our placing agency and received approval from them and from immigration for two as well. In December, we learned about a little girl who is from the very same orphanage our Macie is from. Her orphanage said that her paperwork was done, but they thought she was still waiting for a family. I knew I had not advocated for her, but swore I had seen her before. I am pretty convinced it is possible to have dreamed about a child you have never seen or met. We had our agency check on her status/file and they found out that her file had been lost (this has nothing to do with them and sadly, it does happen). Her medicals had to be re-done. So we waited...and waited...and waited some more. We were told at the end of March that it would be very realistic that it would arrive to our agency in April. April came and went. In early May we learned that it was being translated and that it might take 2-3 weeks for that. Today we found out that her province forgot to put a certain stamp on it that was necessary, so it had been sent back to them. You would think this would be a quick fix, but who knows. This girl has no idea how messed up her paperwork has been and how much a family has been thinking about her and praying for her. There have been so many God signs that this child is to be ours. I hope to be able to share them with you at some point. If you pray, please pray that God will move mountains for this girl's paperwork to finally be completed and to arrive at our agency. We have been trying to guard our hearts, but also have been waiting patiently and faithfully. We believe this will work out, but can't help but to be getting nervous now that we have our LOA for Macie. We have to submit a letter of intent for a second child before our travel approval for Macie comes. Please pray that He would reveal His plan soon. We know His plan is perfect!