Deep breath...regroup....

OK. Well, as many of you know, we had a tough night Monday that involved a couple of very frustrating phonecalls and emails with the US consulate in Vietnam. The email we were hoping to receive announcing our preapproval and OK to travel was actually a notice that we should hear the determination within the next 60 working days. With the date they put on that notice, that's mid June. I bottomed out and felt crushed. That finish line just keeps getting moved!

So, Brian and I decided we needed to approach things differently. Obviously our nightly emailing/phonecalling were not productive; the congressional inquiries from Vic Snyder's and Mark Pryor's offices at least thusfar haven't brought them any results either, at least not yet. And our constant obsessing definitely has taken its toll on me. So I decided to step back and take a breather for a few days, and take a less "involved" (i.e. obsessive) approach... These last few months have been frustrating, and this lack of control is infuriating!(I hear the laughs from all of you who have been or are currently on this Vietnam adoption journey.)

In any case, Sam is there and waiting on us. We believe God wants him to be part of our family. We feel as if we've done what we can to make that happen, and we've gotta pass the details and timeline off to God. (I hear God saying, "Well, FINALLY.")
Many, MANY thanks for all the prayers and support and phonecalls--many of you are in at least the same quagmire of frustration, if not worse. I pray for all of you as well.

Note the wonderful picture we got of Sam this week. He's wearing the same little overalls that he had on at his referral in September. Strangely those little pants don't seem quite as long anymore...

We're at Step 12!

That's the end of the Vietnam government approval process. Historically, when you hit Step 12 (and as a result got assigned a G&R date), you packed your bags and WENT.
On the US government side of the equation, we're still waiting on I600 pre-approval to travel. Last night was yet another round of email from USCIS requesting more paperwork. Without boring you to death with the details (too late for that) one of the things I had already sent them last week, and Jynger confirmed today that the other two items were re-delivered yesterday to them. SO....we wait.

There's that DNA-testing issue sitting there like the elephant in the room. Apparently our government hasn't hammered out the details yet, so we're hoping if we get pre-approval and travel before they do work them out, maybe it won't apply to us. We have nothing else to do except hope that is the case. Are we scared that this rule may hold us up for another 2 or 3 months? Heck, yes. We just hope it won't.

Two of our fellow adoptive families in this process, Lori and Nadra, are just as weary as we are...if not more so, because both of their little one's paperwork is stuck in bureaucratic paralysis at an earlier stage than ours. I'm hoping their paperwork will zoom ahead in the next week or so. It's time for Sadie, Drew, and Sam to come home.

Holding onto hope....

It's what we've got right now. Not a whole lot else...but we did hear a couple of encouraging tidbits this week.
1. The USCIS has unofficially let it be known that there will at least be SOME exceptions to the DNA testing of relinquished children. No clarification on which, but at least we hope it would include already referred children, or ones already in orphanages, or something that includes those of us stuck in limbo over the last 6 months.
2. We received a bizarre series of emails from USCIS this week, with them requesting various parts of our dossier (which we've sent them previously, but which have apparently disappeared.) We got an email Thursday night confirming that they had all of our dossier now and that it was being reviewed. It isn't exactly the Receipt of Acknowledgment, but then they've already sent us two of those and then later wrote us back telling us to ignore them. Confusing, frustrating, etc, but almost normal to us at this point. Upside: they admit to having all of our dossier, now we just wait for I600 (and travel)pre-approval from them.
3. Jynger expects our G&R date in the next couple of weeks. (decoding of adoption lingo: G&R is the giving and receiving date, the date assigned by the Vietnamese government, when we travel and the adoptive child is officially recognized as your child). Jynger says it is POSSIBLE, and I know that's not even close to PROBABLE or CERTAIN, but April could still be a possibility for travel if everything lines up in our favor.

So.....we hope, and wait. And pray some more. Thank you so much to all of you who have sent us kind words and prayers. The support has been overwhelming and sustaining to us. Sam has no idea how big his cheerleading team is here. But hopefully he will soon!

Wishing this were an April Fool's joke.

Things were really looking good for travel this month. We got word that the remaining documents of Sam's dossier had been delivered to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and we were at Step 10, one of the final steps of the pingpong of paperwork in Vietnam. We were happy...we were joyous....
And then.
And then this afternoon, we got an email from our agency. Jynger forwarded to us an email from USCIS, announcing a new requirement, effective today, for I-600 approval: DNA verification of the birthmother and abandoned child. Yes, that is as complicated and near-impossible for an abandoned child as it seems. Particularly for children left at orphanages months--even years earlier. There was nothing in the email stating "for all FUTURE referrals", or "exempting those poor souls who have been delayed with the previous I-600 changes we made in October." We can only hope that there is some...who am I kidding?
We're discouraged tonight. Our good news had us brushing off our knees and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. As the saying goes, it must have been an oncoming train. It feels like a sucker punch out of nowhere, and we're feeling a bit bruised by these punches over the last 6 months.
Sam, my man, know we're trying.