Monday, April 16th, Juan's visa paperwork (Article 5) was picked up from the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou, but not without a little scare first! We had been contacted late in the afternoon on Wed, April 12th that we needed an updated document before they could continue processing her paperwork. We had a similar issue that took 6 weeks to resolve back in January 2017. I was devastated. I feared we wouldn't be able to travel until July. I pushed to speak to someone in charge at USCIS (immigration) and Officer Jones was amazing. She was very informative and told me that while this was an easy fix, it wouldn't be a quick fix. "Give me a week," she said. On Friday, I emailed her, asking if there had been any progress in our case. To my surprise, she emailed back just a few minutes later to tell me everything had been taken care of on Thursday and forwarded to the consulate in GZ!
ONE day!! As I said a prayer of thanksgiving, I felt God say, "Look what I can do!" Why do we ever doubt His plans?!
So we were back on track for pick up on April 16th, but I didn't breathe a sigh of relief until I received an email from our agency rep in China who said it had in fact been picked up and overnighted to Beijing. Travel Approval waits have been averaging 7-10 days but just two days later, I received an email from our agency saying we had Travel Approval!! When we got LOA at the end of February, we hadn't expected to travel until the end of May and yet, God made a way for us to get to her sooner! With our first adoption, Alex said his least busy time at work is mid-April to mid-May and he hoped we would travel then. Well, we left April 18th for Brielle, May 1st for Beilyn, and will now leave April 28th for BellaMei! He is in e.v.e.r.y detail! Just to understand how unpredictable travel can be (and difficult to plan ahead for), we received Brielle's file on 9/27, Beilyn's on 1/7, and BellaMei's on 2/23...and yet they will all 3 have gotcha days within 11 days of each other...all mid-April to mid-May. 😊
Besides TA showing in the system on April 18th, we also received lots of new pictures and videos of baby Juan that day, including pictures from her birthday!! I was so happy to see they celebrated her special day! Such a gift! 💗
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| This picture was taken on April 18th, the day of our TA! Another mom was picking up her daughter and was able to meet Juan. |
We are so excited to bring this special little girl home!!
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