Favorable Determination Letter Arrived!!!!!!!!!!!!

It finally came!!!!!!!!!  I was worried this Favorable Determination Letter might take months.....some parents have been waiting for months already.  I have to admit right before we checked the mail we said a quick prayer while driving to the mailbox, "Please Lord let that letter be in there."

Lo and behold it was there!  What does this FDL letter mean you might ask?  Well, after applying for an I600A (Application for Advanced Processing of Orphan Petition), we got our fingerprints taken at our Seattle USCIS (immigration) office.  We then just had to wait to see if they liked what they saw in our application (it included a formal letter, almost $1000, and a copy of our home study).  Oh the waiting was a bit painful!

So today's letter said, "It has been determined that you are able to furnish proper care to an orphan..."  That truly was music to our ears.

Once we saw those words, we quickly took it down to our local UPS store as they had a notary all ready for us.  We got a few copies made of the document, had it notarized, and then shipped off 171 pages of documents (3 copies of our homestudy and dossier) to our agency.

As we understand it, once it is in our agency's hands on Monday, they will review it and see if we need to make any changes.  Once they approve it (with changes made as necessary), it will be shipping off to Ethiopia, and we will be officially put on THE WAITLIST....the waiting line begins!

Can you hear the excitement?  We are simply overjoyed at being so close to finally being able to make that paper chain of numbers to count down until we are #1 on the list.....meaning we would finally be waiting for THE CALL letting us know who this sweet little girl is.

On a side note....today we were at our niece's 5th birthday party.  Joe was holding our little niece Iz and I was holding our littlest niece "Ellie."  All of a sudden, seeing those two little girls both in our arms, I got the sense that yep, we were eventually going to have two little girls to hold in our arms and love forever.  Crazy?  Yes!  Wonderful?  Most certainly!  Our hearts are open to whatever the Lord wants for our family....and we might just be a family of 6 someday :)

Thanks for letting me share,
Deanna and family