Travel Approval

We finally got the call for travel approval.  Normally, it wouldn't take more than a few days after the Article 5 pick up, but we got caught in an audit.  Apparently, the CCCWA (China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption), felt it was the right time to audit the paperwork of families who were in process at this time.  Had our paperwork been a little earlier or a little later, we would have received our travel approval sooner.

But the timing is ok.  Had we gotten the approval, we would have had to agonize over the question of whether to rush to travel before the trade fair or wait.  Now it seems pretty obvious that we'd wait until May.  Our travel advisor at the adoption agency thought an April 11th gotcha day might be possible, but with our plans to travel to Korea before heading to China, that means we'd probably leave on April 4th - 5 days from now!  That's probably not going to happen.

Our next step is to confirm travel dates with the adoption agency.  We'll keep you posted when we have travel confirmed.

Article 5

Last night as we were talking about the coming weeks and months, we wondered when the next step, which is the issuance of Article 5, would happen.  In fact, Dana had sent an e-mail to our case worker at Great Wall earlier that night. This morning, when I checked my e-mail, I realized that I had an e-mail with Article 5 approval.  So we're one step closer and now we just wait for Travel Approval (TA).

We had a meeting with our travel coordinator last week and she offered 3 possible "gotcha day" options based on expected paperwork processing.  The earliest would be March 28.  The next would be April 5 and the one after that would be May 9.  Gotcha days typically happen on a Monday, but the April 5th date is a Tuesday (also the date of the Wisconsin presidential primary) due to the Chinese Qingming Festival (also referred to as tomb sweeping day) on April 4.  Then you'll notice a gap between April 5 and May 9.  In the Guangzhou area during April, there is a large trade fair called the Canton Fair.  Due to a shortage of hotel rooms our travel costs would spike so we would travel after the fair is complete.  But we can't make any travel plans until we get the TA, so now we're just waiting on that.

Fundraising

Since we've started our journey to bring Wen De home, many of you have offered prayers and encouragement.  Some of you have even asked if you could help by making a gift toward our expenses.  In response to those offers, we've set up a fundraising page with an organization called AdoptTogether.  It's a non-profit organization that allows you to make tax deductible contributions toward a specific family's adoption.  Here is our link:

https://www.adopttogether.org/marthaler

We chose AdoptTogether for a several reasons.  First of all, donations are tax deductible since AdoptTogether is a 501(c)(3).  It's always nice to get a tax break for your generosity.  Secondly, there is accountability.  Before donations are released to us, we have to provide evidence of the expense through a receipt or other means.  This gives you the assurance that your donation will go toward bringing Wen De home. Third, the processing fees are minimal, mostly to cover the credit card processing costs.  We looked into several crowd funding/fundraising sites and some kept up to 10% of the donation and most are not tax deductible.  Third, the founder of AdoptTogether has a really cool story about his family and how and why he started AdoptTogether.  You can check out his story below.

If you want to learn more about AdoptTogether, check out this link:  https://www.adopttogether.org/how-it-works

Thank you for the prayers, encouragement and support you've shown us during this process.  If you feel led to make a donation to our adoption, we sincerely appreciate it.  But if now is not the right time, that's ok.  Please continue to keep Wen De in your prayers as he makes a huge transition in his life.

Visa Approval

The US Department of State has a website where you can go and check on the status of your Visa.  We've been checking it almost daily and today it finally returned this:

Now we wait for the US Consulate in Guangzhou to issue an Article 5 stating the adoption is a go.  Then we start planning travel.  Ready or not, here we come!

DS-260

Early this morning, we received an e-mail from the National Visa Center (NVC) saying they had received our approved I-800 form.  That meant that we could file the DS-260, which is an online process.  On the DS-260 form, filled out on behalf of our child, we got to answer questions like:

• Have you ever ordered, incited, committed, assisted, or otherwise participated in genocide?
• Have you ever engaged in the recruitment of or the use of child soldiers? 
• Have you ever directly or indirectly assisted or supported any of the groups in Columbia known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), National Liberation Army (ELN), or United Self­ Defense Forces of Columbia (AUC)?
• Have you ever been directly involved in the establishment or enforcement of population controls forcing a woman to undergo an abortion against her free choice or a man or a woman to undergo sterilization against his or her free choice?
• Have you committed, ordered, incited, assisted, or otherwise participated in extrajudicial killings, political killings, or other acts of violence?
• Have you ever been involved in, or do you seek to engage in, money laundering? 

We answered NO on Wen De's behalf.  If he later informs us that we should have answered YES, we'll need to have a long talk.

Now we wait for the Visa to be approved so it can go to the US Consulate in Guangzhou.

I-800 Approval

On Friday, February 13, we received notice of our I-800 approval.  Today our contact at the adoption agency notified us that our referral acceptance package was sent to China today.  The next step is NVC (National Visa Center) confirmation and then we fill our an online form called a DS-260. 

Then it goes like this according to the adoption agency: "Once both of those pieces (NVC confirmation and DS-260) are complete and added to your packet that will already be in China, our staff will deliver everything to the American Consulate, who will issue the Article 5. This is the notice that the US finds the adoption acceptable and your child eligible for immigration into the US. With the Article 5, all of your documents will then be delivered to the CCCWA. The CCCWA will then issue your Travel Approval so you can begin the travel journey to pick up that cute kiddo of yours! In total, once your LSC package is complete, the wait time until a Travel Approval is issued is approximately 4-6 weeks."

So depending on the timeframe for the NVC and DS-260 documents, we're likely looking at travel in April/May.

LSC/I-800

Dana signing the LSC (letter seeking confirmation)

Today we received the official LSC (letter seeking confirmation) matching us with Chan, Wen De.  We happily accepted, made a copy and then started assembling the I-800 documents. It takes 2-4 weeks for the I-800 to be processed and accepted.