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Journey to Esther
The special needs route of adoption is quite different than the regular "non special needs" process. With a non special needs adoption, you send in your dossier to China where they match you with a child. Once your referral is received, you wait for travel approval and leave for China about 4-6 weeks later. In the special needs process, it's a bit different. China sends adoption agencies (that are qualified to have a special needs program) a list of children with special needs, or "waiting children." The agencies then have two-three months to find a family for each child. Families interested in adopting a waiting child, are able to look at the special needs list and "pick" the child they would like to adopt, according to what special need they are interested in. The most common special needs in the waiting child program are cleft lip and/or palate, minor to severe heart conditions, club feet, spinal bifida, missing limbs or digits, birth marks, hepatitis B, and older children who are healthy. (There are lots of other special needs, some very minor and some more major, but these are some of the most common.) Once a family has found a child they want to adopt, they start writing their Letter of Intent, or LOI. This is the "Rehabilitation and Nurture" plan for the child, detailing what the family plans to do once the child is home; ie, see a specialist, discuss any needed surgeries, etc. The Letter of Intent is then sent to China, and the family waits for Pre-Aproval. This normally takes 4-6 weeks. Once your Pre-Aproval is received you can start collecting forms for the dossier. (Although most families start the dossier after they send in their LOI.) You then send in your dossier and wait for Travel Approval. This can take anywhere from 6-10 weeks. Once the Travel Approval (TA) has arrived, you are set to go to China! You can leave anywhere from a few days to a few weeks after the T.A. has been received. The travel portion of the trip is the same as a non special needs adoption.Claudio and Sera will be going to China to bring Esther home. We are praying she will be here before Christmas, but realistically it looks like they will travel around January or February. Our Timeline:
Nov 22- First saw Esther on Lifeline's Special Needs List
Jan 26- E-mailed Lifeline about adopting Esther
Feb 17- Green Light from the agency saying "yes you can adopt her!!"
Feb 20- Made the decision to adopt her
Feb 22- Received application and Letter of Intent from Agency
March 10- Sent LOI and application to Lifeline
March 11- Lifeline sent our LOI to China (this is our LOI date)
March 16- Rec'd dossier/homestudy packet from Lifeline
March 18- Our friends adopting a little boy on the same special needs list as Esther, rec'd their family size waiver today!! We are so happy for them!!!
March 27- Still waiting on our PA!
April 9- Pre-Aprovals came in today for several families! We just missed the cut-off as the latest LOI date was March 10. Lifeline got PA's for three families with LOI's in January and February. We hope to be in the next batch of PA's hopefully later this month or next month.
April 30- There have been some rumors that PA's are on their way!! Hopefully we'll hear something on Monday!
May 3- Yesterday PA's came in, but ours was not included. Lifeline e-mailed and said that because we are in need of a family size waiver, our Pre Approval has to be signed by all of the directors at the CCAA. They believe that we have gotten ours, but it's just sitting on someone desk waiting to be signed. The CCAA is off for the week because of May holidays, so we hope to hear something in the next few days/weeks. We're at day 53!
May 23- Still waiting on PA! Referrals started coming in today, so maybe the CCAA stuck our PA in the package to our agency? Hopefully!! Day 72!
May 30- Got an e-mail from Karla at Lifeline! Their facilitator, Lily checked up on our PA and said they were just waiting for the director to sign it. So please, Mr. Director of the CCAA, SIGN OUR PA!!!!
June 14- Karla E-mailed!!!! OUR PA IS ON ITS WAY!! HALLELUIAH!!
We waited 95 days for our Pre Approval.
June 15- Called our social worker to update homestudy. We also got new pictures of Esther taken just a few days ago! Click HERE.
June 27- Sent in I-600A form to INS
July 1- Received fingerprint appointment from INS. Had to reschedule.. waiting for new dates!
July 5- Homestudy update/Emma's 1 year post placement report with our social worker, Megan. Hoping for a late August DTC??
July 7- Received our new fingerprint appointments- July 32rd
July 8- Medical forms done!
July 15- Sent off my birth certificate to state of Maryland for authentication
July 20- Rec'd birth certificate back from Maryland!
Aug 4- Our social worker is still waiting for our background checks to come in so she can finish our homestudy. Praying these arrive soon so we can get this homestudy done!!
Aug 5- Finishing homestudy paperwork for Lifeline
Update on Esther- Esther was moved from the 5th floor of her orphanage, down to the 4th floor. She is now sleeping in a big girl bed and attending English classes! She was having a hard time adjusting, leaving her friends and teachers and also battling an infection near her eye, but she is doing much better now. Please keep Esther in your prayers!!
Aug 24- Today is Emma's 1 year Gotcha Day anniversary! Tomorrow we could officially send in our dossier since China requires a 1 year wait for DTC between adoptions. But our dossier isn't done yet! We are still finishing up some last minute paperwork for the homestudy. Claudio's employment letter is on its way and our criminal background checks, state clearances and my employment letter should be on their way soon.
Sept 2- YIPEE! We received our homestudy, criminal background checks, state abuse & neglect clearences from Mary at Life for Kids, our homestudy agency. She sent copies of everything to Karla at Lifeline.
Sept. 8- Our homestudy went to INS last week, so we should be getting our I-171h any day now. I'm still waiting for my employment letter which should be here soon, and tomorrow I will send my birth certificate to the U.S. Dept. of State to be authenticated. Once we get our I-171h, we will send everything to the Secretary of State and have it certified, and then on to the Chinese Consulate. We're looking good to be DTC in the next 2 weeks!! FINALLY! We also got a new picture of Esther today, from a mom in Shenzhen adopting her daughter. She was able to visit the orphanage and see our Esther. She is getting so big! Emma loves looking at her picture and keeps coming to the computer asking "Can I see?" She calls Esther something that sounds like "I, I" and also says "Bu" when she sees her. (Which is Chinese for "No".. Uh oh!)
Click HERE to see Esther's new picture. Thank you so much Donna!! Here is a link to Donna's blog-Gwendolyn Claire.
Sept. 9- Another Delay!! We found out what we thought were our criminal background checks, are apparently not what we need. The forms we got are totally different from the ones we had during Emma's paperchase. I called around to the different local police stations and they are only open for criminal background checks Monday-Friday, which is a problem for Claudio since he has to work. :( This made our day not so nice. It's like we are almost there and then there's something else that just happens to get in the way! It's so frustrating! But, a much needed relief was when we went to Night of Joy at Disney World with the kids. It was Emma's first time at Disney (yes- she's been here a year and hasn't seen Disney yet!! What's worse- she hasn't been to the beach yet! Shame on us!!) but she LOVED it! We took turns taking Emma on Dumbo, which she loved! She kept saying "bumbo.. fly!" It was so funny seeing her face during the Teacups ride, she loved that too! The best part was seeing Steven Curtis Chapman perform in front of Cinderella's Castle. That was awesome! It was even better to watch Emma taking it all in. She had never been to a concert before, but she loved it! She was clapping, singing, dancing, yelling, waving etc. She loved it!! We really enjoyed this night, it was a much needed break from the frustrations!!
Sept. 10- Got my employment letter!!!!
Sept. 12- After being so frustrated with the background checks issue, I called Life for Kids and asked what I should do. They were so nice and told us they would do everything and expedite it! Yahoo! Also, we were hoping to get our I-171h today.. and guess what was in the mail? A letter from INS! But.. not exactley what we wanted.. it was a letter saying they needed a money order for $10. I forgot about the fact that I accidentally made the first money order out for $10 less than what it was supposed to be. The good news is that our I-171h is ready and will be sent out once the money is received. I'll send the money and form out tomorrow.
Sept. 13- Got the money order and sent it off to INS today. I-171h by the end of the week?? We sure hope so!
Sept. 22- YES!!! We got our I-171h in the mail today!! AND.. we got my birth certificate back from authentication at the Dept. of State in D.C. (which was signed by the lovely Condoleezza Rice!) Now, all we need is our background checks and everything is off to be notarized and certified!
Oct 5- Well it only took about 3 weeks, but we FINALLY got the last two documents needed for our dossier! The criminal background check's arrived yesterday.. so last night we faxed them to Lifeline to make sure they were okay, and copied our entire dossier and got it ready to go to the Secretary of State & Chinese Consulate! Karla e-mailed this morning that our CBC's were great, so we got everything together and now our entire dossier is out of our hands- which is a bit scary!! We have Carol at Dependable Adoption Courier Service escorting some of our documents to the Chinese Consulate in Washington D.C. Hopefully those will be back by next week along with our documents from the Secretary of State. They should take five business days, and then we will send them to the Chinese Consulate in Houston. Then we are all done! Send it to Lifeline and start the long wait for TA!
At this point, we are just so happy we have everything. But.. we are still not out of the woods yet. So we would really appreciate if you could pray that nothing else would go wrong with our dossier!! Thank you!! Esther has waited long enough, and so have we!We got a new computer last month, but unfortunately, our website program does not run on it! So, we have started a blog for our journey to Esther. We will still update this site, but not as often as the blog and we will use it for our trip. Here's the link:Oct. 12- Yipee! Everything was sent off to the appropriate places on Thursday, so we are just waiting to recieve everything back from the Secretary of State. The recent turn around has been about 5 business days, so we should get everything back by the end of the week. Carol, our courier from Dependable Adoption Courier Service took our documents to the D.C. Chinese Consulate yesterday and will pick them up on Friday.
All we have left to do is print out the pictures of our family, and get my passport photos.. and we're done!!
Nov. 17- And just when you think you're done paperchasing and nothing else could possiblty go wrong, God just throws another curve ball at you!! Several of our documents were not accepted by the Secretary of State because of the notary signatures were done incorrectly. Ugh! So, we got the documents redone again, and decided to send them through a courier. Well.. our documents still had some problems and our wonderful courier Pam offered to help us finish the dossier. So she fixed some things and then sent it off to the appropriate places and it reached Lifeline's desk on Monday morning! Karla e-mailed and said our dossier would be on it's way to China that afternoon! So...... we are DTC November 14, 2005!! It feels sooo good to be able to say these words! DTC!! WAHOO!! We're expecting sweet Esther to be home around March.. so we'll see what happens. But be sure to keep up with our blog at http://www.tochina4esther.blogspot.com That gets updated more frequently than our website.
This page was last updated: November 17, 2005
Making a difference
One day a man was walking along the beach when he noticed a figure in the distance. As he got closer he realized the figure was that of a boy picking something up and gently throwing it into the ocean. Approaching the boy he asked, "What are you doing?" The youth replied, "Throwing starfish into the ocean. The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don't throw them in, they'll die."
"Son," the man said, "Don't you realize there are miles and miles of beach and hundreds of starfish? You can't possibly make a difference." After listening politely the boy bent down, picked up another starfish and threw it into the surf.
Then smiling at the man he said, "I made a difference for that one."
Lifeline Children's Services (our adoption agency)
Click here to read stories of families who have adopted special needs children from China.
