For those of you (faithful blog-readers or not) who have wondered where we've been in the blog world, I thought I better take a quick moment to catch you up. :) At our last post we were still WAITING--that particular wait ended for us July 27th when we receive our LOA (Letter of Approval) from China to adopt SongLian. Yeah! This is real! The last 2 months have been full of steps 8-15 (if you remember #17 is travel): 8. 800 paper work submitted to USCIC - 8/1 9. 800 provisional approval received - 8/15 10. Information sent to Nation Visa Center - 8/20 11. visa information cabled to US Embassy in Guangzhou - 8/27 12. Article 5 letter received - 9/11 13. Article 5 to the CCCWA - 9/12 14. Travel Approval received from CCCWA - 9/21 15. Apply for Consulate Appointment - 9/22 Up next: 16. Receive Consulate Appointment (we should hear by Tuesday morning)* 17. Travel (about 2 weeks after receiving TA) *This appointment will give us our travel dates. So full of thankfulness that within a few weeks we will have our sweet girl. Our room has turned into an international packing zone as we gather the (many) items to travel to China and back with 4 children. :)We will be in country for 2 weeks in order to process all that needs to be processed (and will keep you posted while we are there). THANK YOU for your prayers for our family-- *We need them now: life is full, full, full and our emotions are all over the place. Thanks for praying for our family unit as well as the check-list of things to be done before we go. And we know we will need your prayers as we travel and upon return. God is good: it is He who called us to this journey and it is He who will be faithful to complete it. So glad we can trust in His sovereignty.