Friday, September 20, 2013

next steps...

On September 6, we finally received our LOA (Letter of Acceptance). After almost five months of hard waiting, we had it! This was the letter from the CCCWA asking us to accept or not accept Ivy-Ann as our daughter. Of course, we said yes!

Once we had our LOA, we could then move on to other things. I spent three hours last Saturday filling out our visa applications. They were sent to China. I got an email yesterday saying our visas had been picked up and mailed back to us. I'm hoping we get them tomorrow or Monday.

Our LOA was overnighted on September 9, with some other paperwork, to the USCIS. The approval of this paperwork will give us permission to bring Ivy-Ann into the US. Once the USCIS has approved our paperwork, they will forward it to the NVC (National Visa Center).

At that point, I get to contact the NVC daily and request that they email me the pdf of our cable letter which is going over to the US Embassy in China. The NVC does not have to email the pdf to us. We will eventually get the hard copy in the mail, but it will speed the process along if they are willing to email it. I'm hoping I will quickly reach someone kind who doesn't mind helping me.

Once we have a copy of the cable letter, we can begin the process for our Article 5. This is the process for issuing Ivy-Ann's visa at the Consulate in China. This process takes two weeks.

Once the Article 5 is sent to the CCCWA, we begin the wait for our Travel Approval (TA). Once this arrives, it won't be long before we are told when our consulate appointment (CA) is.

Not long after getting our TA and CA, we will be on our way to our little girl! We won't know exactly when we will travel until we get our TA, but we are hoping to go to China sometime in December, if not November.

We are coming, sweet girl! :)