It's Official!

Yesterday, Bethany called our adoption social worker, Rebecca Davis to find out how much longer we would have to wait to get our referral, or final approval, from China. In the usual process of adopting a typical, healthy child, a family submits their dossier, then China reviews it (years later in recent cases), matches the family with a child, and finally gives a referral. This process is currently 31 months long and growing. In our case, we submitted our dossier in June of '07 and then later elected to adopt a "waiting child" (special needs). Because China had not reviewed our dossier yet due to the fact that it was buried in the backlog of files for a typical adoption, Rebecca informed us that it could take as much as 2 or 3 more months to find review it. Bethany called me right after this conversation and expressed her frustration because she desperately wants to hold our little boy in her arms and give him the love he deserves. I tried to comfort her, but I was frustrated, too.

Ten minutes later, Bethany called me back. Rebecca had just called her back to say that moments after hanging up with her, the mailman delivered our official referral from China to her office. Just like that, the frustration from waiting all these years to add to our family vanished in an instant. It's official, the People's Republic of China has decreed that Jiang Yizhan of Guangxi Province in China is to be adopted by the Naughton family of Hartsburg, Missouri. Our agency, Children's Hope International (CHI) is sending us the referral packet today via UPS. We're hoping that they have included some recent photos and information about our new son. We are positively giddy with anticipation.

Next week, we will speak with the travel coordinator for CHI to arrange our flight to China. We could be on Chinese soil in September. Recall that in our petition to adopt letter I expressed my hope to have our son home by his 2nd birthday on September 16th. That seems to be a possiblity now! "Xie-Xie" (Chinese for "thank you") to everyone who has prayed for us and sent us their positive vibes along the way. We hope that you will share in our joy at this wonderful news. And as always, keep checking the blog for more updates. (I may even be able to post from China!)