now the waiting part begins

It's official!  If you haven't heard, we are officially DTC as of 9/30! 

DTC?  Dossier to China

Dossier?  Our dossier is a collection of 13 documents, which includes our home study report, medical results, background checks, pictures of our family and house, extremely detailed financial information, various letters we have written, and other Daniel and Leslie Todd personal information.  We, essentially, have been working on gathering for our dossier since the very beginning of our adoption journey.  It's weird to think that the bulk of frantically gathering of documents is over.  As big of a step as DTC is, we are still roughly 4-6 months out from travel.

Now to the waiting part.  So what does this mean now that we are DTC?  Where do we go from here?

The next step we are waiting for is LID (logged in date, approved on 10/15), which takes roughly 3-4 weeks from DTC.  This means that the CCCWA (China's Centre for Children's Welfare and Adoption) has reviewed our dossier and entered in our information into their adoption system.  Once the LID is received, this is essentially when the matching process begins. 

However, since we are already matched, then we will immediately go into waiting for our LOA (letter of acceptance) for Paisley.  The LOA is different from the LOI (letter of intent) that we mailed off in May.  The LOI states that we are intending on adopting Paisley, but nothing is officially official as of yet.  We received PA (pre-approval) from China on 6/19 stating that Paisley is "on hold" for us to adopt.  Once we received PA, the CCCWA gave us a 6-month deadline to send our dossier to them, which we did.  YAY!

...so are you keeping up?  It's a lot to follow and process.  We know.  Our entire lives revolve around these terms and acronyms.

Now back to the LOA.  Once we are LID, then begins our LOA wait, which takes anywhere from 60-90 days.  (Honestly, the LOA can last longer than 90 days.  There are families as you are reading this that have been waiting on LOA for longer than 90 days.  Please pray for these families as this step in the waiting process is long and extremely painful.)  The LOA states that we accept to adopt Paisley as our child.  Once we receive LOA, then we are roughly 8 weeks (or longer) from travel.

whew.  That is a lot.  Frankly, that isn't even close to the end of the process once we receive LOA.  As you can see by our official Lifeline timeline, we are not really close to being halfway even though we are starting to pick up some steam.  It is a lot of hurry up and wait.

We still covet your prayers for the process, waiting part, and financial obligations.  We've applied for a few grants so far and we continue to apply for grants.  We hope to hear something soon about those.  Thank you so much for your prayers over the past 11 months.  There have been hard days, easy days, sad days, happy days.  Adoption is a roller coaster of emotions and a lot of uncertainty and unanswered questions.  Even though it is the hardest thing we've done with our lives thus far, we are honored and blessed we were chosen to raise this beautiful little girl.  We fall more in love with her every day.  Thank you for letting us share our journey to bring Paisley home with you!