Journal 11/10/07 thru TODAY! (Newest first)

09/23/09 Another email from came in from CAWLI. It mentions that not all of the travel notices are in, ours is one of them! Hope it gets in soon! Below is the text of the email.

Dear Families,
Thanks for your patients! After so long waiting, finally we can plan our adoption trip.

All of your  families still  haven't  got travel notice from CCAA.  We expect  getting your TAS within two weeks.So we are trying to arrange your adoption trip.

Due to Chinese Oct. vacation and Guangzhou Trade Fair, our group will departure US on Oct.29, arrival in Beijing on Oct.30 and have a sight seeing. Arrival in province on Nov.1st. Your visa appointment will be Nov.9th, and will be leave Guangzhou back home on Nov.12th.

Our travel meeting is on Oct.15th at 1:00pm-3:00pm.

This is a group itinerary, your family can departure US earlier, later or departure China later. But you earliest leaving date from China is after Nov.11th 4:30pm, at that time we just get your child's visa from US consulate of Guangzhou.

If you have any question or requests, feel free contact us.

Your sincerely,
Ellen

09/11/09 Well, nobody said this process would be easy but nobody can prepare you for how hard the waiting is! To make a long story short, China held up our Travel Approval for two weeks because someone in our group made a mistake on their form. If everything falls into place RIGHT NOW we can go to China next Thursday September 17th, if not we go Oct. 29! Needless to say we are hoping for September 17th! Apparently China closes down goverment offices a LOT in October so no chance for travel there without added a lot of travel days (22) and a lot more money!

08/18/09 Faith's room is painted and furnished and just waiting for her to arrive now!

07/17/09 Ok, now it's my parents who ROCK! They handed me an envelope today saying "it's to help with some of the cost". The check will help with a LOT of the cost.

07/12/09 Emmaus rocks! Allison went to her reunion today and the folks in her group did a quick fundraiser and gave her the money to help us out!

07/01/09 The bedroom furniture came in today! Still nothing new to report on our date of travel to China. The waiting is getting harder knowing there is an actual person half way across the world now! God's providence, He needs to grant us patience!

05/27/09 Another email from CAWLI today:
You are correct; that your  6-8 weeks start when we receive your Letter of Acceptance.  I will call you the day it arrives to get your permission to sign and mail back to CCAA asap. I would hope that you would travel by the end of September ( I know I cannot guarantee anything - but this is my hope)

It was Tom Petty who sang the waiting is the hardest part. That certainly is true, we initially thought travel would be late summer probably August. This email seems to state it will be really late summer or early fall. Now that we have photos and a real person behind all this work waiting for Faith to get home will be very tough! Prayer and trust in God will get us through it all! God is in control after all.

05/26/09 Well, Catholic Charities just left and they did a second homestudy since our other one expired. All looks good and everything is still on track! We also mailed out Faith's care package today that included a dress, a photo album (with Chinese labels to say who is who), an asian doll and some other things as well!

05/17/09 We went to Jordan's Furniture today and bought a bedroom set for Faith's room. Since she's three we bought her a bed already, no need to worry about a crib. We bought a night stand as well while there. We already have the paint as well as a Tinkerbell border for the room, suppose it's time to actually do some work to the room now! We will be painting it two tones, "Tinkerbell Green" and "Dream Come True Purple", we didn't make up the names of these colors, honestly!

04/30/09 Exciting news! We are reviewing a file of a girl from China!  Born Jan 10, 2006, she's 3, cute as ever and hearing impaired.  If all goes well it could be a mid summer trip to China to get her!  We have sent our letter of intent to adopt her! A little bit about who is Faith FengHua Gingras - Wu Fenghua, Female, born on Jan. 10, 2006 (estimated), was picked up at No. 1095 Hankou liberation avenue in Wuhan City (at the gate of the underground garage of Xihe hospital) on Oct. 9, 2006. She was sent to our institute to be fostered till now by Xinhua street police substation Hanjing branch of Wuhan city. See Google Map of Wuhan City. “Wu” represents Wuhan City Children’s Welfare Institute; “Feng” is the common name of children entered the institute in the month; “Hua” conveys the hope that she could remember she is a Chinese no matter where she is in the future. She was abandoned at 9 months and that leads us to believe it is when her mother found out she was deaf. Her favorite activity is outdoor games and her favorite toy is dolls. She has been living in a foster home at this point. This is good because she is getting the one-on-one attention she needs instead of having to share attention with many other children if she were in an orphanage. The only tough part may be another separation for her when we get there!

04/27/09 Hepatitus shot part two today!

3/23/09 We have begun our Hepatitus shots.  We need three three more for Hep A and B.  It takes 6 months to finish them!  We are #9 on the special needs list so it was time to get these going!

12/19/08 We were logged in with China!  Now we are praying it isn't a 3 year wait!!

12/16/08 Another email today!  DTC stands for Dossier To China.
Dear Families,

Congratulations!  Your dossier is on it's way to China!  Your official DTC date is December 11, 2008.  In several weeks we should hear of your log in date from the CCAA-as soon as we have that information we will pass it along to you.  Just a quick note about log in dates, it sometimes takes a little longer for the CCAA to send us your official log in dates.  That DOES NOT mean your documents have not been logged in it just means they haven't let us know when they were logged in.  They typically wait until they have a bunch to send us and send them out with something else(to save mailing costs)  I promise as soon as we have your log in date I will let you know.

11/26/08 Received an email today saying our I800A form was accepted:
I hope that this email finds you well.  I just wanted to inform you that I have just approved your I-800A and that you will be receiving an official Approval Notice, in the mail, in the coming days.  Have a happy thanksgiving.

Everything is done! Now we have to wait, wait for our information to be translated and sent out to China. 

09/09/08 Allison and Kevin were fingerprinted!  We went to Cranston RI instead of Boston and that was great.  We had a 9am appointment, got there at 8:30, went in and they got us printed and out before 9!  FANTASTIC!  We are done with everything but a verification of employment for Allison.  Once that's done our information can go to China!

06/23/08 Ok it has indeed been a while since we updated this and a lot has happened.  We have had meetings with our social worker, passed some tests online, had our checkups (we both passed yeah) and are close to done most of the work.  CAWLI sent us a check list so here it is.

Hope you are doing well.  We rec'd a number of your documents from Elaine recently, and wanted to give you a copy of what we have in your file.

Anything that needs changes will be highlighted and a description of what needs to be changed will be provided.

Please let us know if you have questions or concerns about any of the information listed below.

OFFICE DOCUMENTS

3.24.08    Eligibility Requirements
3.24.08    Service Agreement
3.24.08    Grievance Policy & Procedure 
4.2.08      Affidavit
4.2.08      Notice of Risk & Waiver of Liability
3.24.08    Release of Information Authorization 
4.2.08      Refund Policy
4.2.08    Personal Service Plan

DOSSIER DOCUMENTS

6.16.08      CCAA Letter
6.16.08      Birth Certificate (Husband)
6.16.08      Birth Certificate (Wife)
6.16.08      Marriage
4.15.08      Criminal Record Check (Husband)
4.15.08    Criminal Record Check (Wife)
4.22.08      EEC-Husband
4.22.08      EEC-Wife
6.16.08        Physical  (Husband)
6.16.08      Physical (Wife)
7.15.08      Verif Employment (Husband)  (should list yearly salary)
10.28.08    Verifi of Employment  (Wife)  (should list yearly salary)
6.16.08      Financial Statement
6.16.08      Home Study
8.15.08    USCIS Approval
6.16.08        Pictures
6.16.08        Passport copy  Husband
6.16.08    Passport copy Wife
6.16.08    2 Passport Pictures (Husband)
6.16.08      2 Passport Pictures (Wife)

SPECIAL DOCUMENTS

6.16.08        3 Reference Letters
4.9.08      DSS Checks
6.16.08      Physical Req of the Home Form
6.16.08        Guardianship Statement
6.16.08    3 years’ Tax Returns
6.16.08      Child’s Health Record
6.16.08      Autobiography
4.24.08    Training Certificate

As you can see we have everything done!  Now we wait for our documents to be translated and sent to China and then we get on the waiting list! 

04/02/08 We had our intake meeting today.  We have a LOT of stuff to keep track of and a lot to do!  Fortunately CAWLI is very good about helping you every step of the way - we've heard it called Adoption for Dummies! and that's just what we need.  We need passports, background checks and lots of forms to fill out and notarize and all that.  God is good - we were at the meeting and Allison checked her watch and noticed it had been about an hour.  She told Kevin he'd better go check the meter so Adam and KEvin left to go check.  Exactly at the same second Kevin arrived to put another quarter in the meter a meter maid who just completed crossing the street asked him "Is that your car".  "Yes" he humbly replied as he put the quarter into the meter that happened to read 0:00 time.  "Ok" she said as she tore off the ticket she had begun to write and threw it in the trash.  Who says meter maids are heartless - God is good!

03/27/08 Well, apparently a couple of pages need to be notarized.  We reprinted the intake and will bring it to our bank today to get that done.  We have a meeting with CAWLI again on Wednesday at 2:00!

03/24/08 The intake package is on it's way with the check.  Mailed on 3/20!  God is so good.  Our next check will need to be for 3,500.  We found out on the same week that our tax return for 2007 will also be 3,500 with about $63.00 left over.  One step down and the next step has already been taken care of.

3/19/08 Ok, we are slow!  The Intake package goes in the mail today with the first check for $200.00.  We've spent money on this, it has now become reality, the awesome journey has really officially begun...

2/27/08 We have begun reviewing and filling out the Intake package!  Well, ok we'll be honest, when we say WE, we actually mean Allison!  We have also been nudged by God to look into adopting a girl from age 0-3 and God has even opened our hearts to a special needs child such as a hearing impaired girl.  God uses Allison to get us out of my comfort zone a lot, He's awesome like that, that's why He is God and we are not!

2/21/08 Allison sent Meg at CAWLI our thanks for the Orientation meeting  and to give her a heads up on what we have planned next.  We also asked if we could have our intake meeting on 3/19.

2/20/08 - We had our Orientation meeting with China Adoption with Love, Inc. (CAWLI) from 6:00-8:00pm.  The process has begun!  Allison and Kevin also decided they will be open to a special needs girl as well.  Probably a deaf girl up to the age of 3.  The adoption process is long so the wait has begun. 

We were surprised to find out that China only allows adoptions of abandoned children and not orphaned.  There are many orphans in China but currently none of them can be adopted.

11/10/07 - God whispered adoption in our ears years ago.  On November 10, 2007 He spoke much louder to us.  We had gone to see Steven Curtis Chapman in Lowell MA with a group of friends (A GREAT GROUP OF FRIENDS).  He spoke about adoption a lot and held a "Change for Adoption" fundraiser.  We left the concert knowing God was calling us to adopt.

In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ, in accord with the favor of his will, for the praise of the glory of his grace that he granted us in the beloved. Ephesians 1:5-6