Hurry up and wait

It's been awhile since I posted something and things have started happening so I think an update is in order..

We finally got all the paperwork done in February: we turned in the final pieces of the home-study paperwork in to our social worker on Feb.12, along with copies of all the dossier documents (the placing agency had told us these needed to be given to the social worker before the home-study could be completed).
2 weeks later, our social worker sent us instructions for requesting clearances (to prove we don't have a record of child abuse) from all the states we've lived in since age 18.  In our case that includes SC, SD, GA (thankfully France doesn't keep a registry so there we don't need anything from them).  We sent those off 2/27.  A week later, our social worker said we could go ahead and schedule the 1st interview in our home, which got set for 3/31.

While we were waiting, we decided to get our dossier documents sealed (notarized, certified, authenticated: see my 2/16 post on paperwork).  All the documents need to be dated within 6 months by the time they arrive at the Chinese Consulate, and our physicals were done in Oct.2014 so we needed to get them to the consulate before mid-April!
The notarization step was simple as there are a couple people where I work who are notaries.
The IL State certification can be done by mail or in person at the downtown Chicago office.
The authentication takes 2 visits to the Chinese consulate in Chicago, as they don't have mail service.  We could use a courier service, but since we could do the state certification in person by going downtown we decided to make a day of it.  On 3/24, we all drove downtown together.  1st stop was the Secretary of State office to get everything certified - it was fairly quiet and only took about 30min to get all 9 of our docs certified (and Jessica was fairly content reading books with us while we waited).  2nd stop was a FedEx office to make copies of all the certification pages (the consulate keeps a full set of copies: I had copied everything else beforehand but still needed copies of the certification pages).  3rd stop (after lunch) was the Chinese consulate - it was very busy but well organized.  I took a number, waited till it came up, and then dropped off all the documents and got a receipt, to pick them up a week later.  4th stop was Lincoln Park Zoo :-)  It was quite chilly but we did get to see a few animals.

We took another drive into the city 10 days later, on Good Friday (since we both had the day off), to pick up the documents from the consulate.

Meanwhile we had the home-study interview at our home on 3/31, another at the office in Aurora a week later, and a final one scheduled for next week at our home.  So far so good!
Our social worker got the clearances from SC, got a rejection letter from SD saying they don't have the authority to give a clearance (go figure - after checking with our placing agency, the home study report can say we attempted to obtain the clearance but could not due to SD state law)... and are still waiting to hear something from GA.

We're also working on our online training (we found out none of the conferences and workshops we went to in the past couple months counted).  Just have a few hours to finish up.

So things are moving along, not as fast as we would like, but we need to trust that the timing is in God's hands.

Once the home-study report is written up, we can file our I800A federal form for authorization to adopt a child from overseas.  Then when we get the approved form back (which we hear takes 6-8 weeks), we can notarize/certify/authenticate the home-study and I800A form.  Then we make copies of all the dossier documents, send everything to our placing agency, which carefully reviews it all (and tells us if anything doesn't look right!) and translates it all into Chinese and sends it to China.  Then we wait for the Chinese government agency that oversees adoptions to review the whole file and give us their approval, at which point we will have a "log-in date".  Then we can wait for our placing agency to match us with a child's file.  Once they call us and we decide to review a file, we'll contact an Adoption Clinic in Chicago to have a doctor help us understand what we'd be dealing with.  Once we say "yes" to adopt a particular child, it'll likely take another 4-6 months for the final paperwork before we can travel to pick them up.  So it could happen before the end of the year!  Or it could be another year from now.  We'll continue to take it 1 step at a time and see how God leads...