Pre-Approval!!

Introducing Evan David Whichard!

We received pre-approval today for Evan!  I was no expecting the call today—in fact, I missed the call and voicemail by our social worker.  Luckily she called me once more before leaving the office for the day (strangely enough I had just picked up my phone to see if I had any messages, etc when she called) to give me the good news.  As I said I was not expecting the news until next week as yesterday-Friday is a holiday in Ch, and everything is shut down for the week.

Now that we have PA, we are able to post his pictures online!  These are the 3 pictures that were sent to us with his referral.  We’ll post more if/when we get them as the process continues.  Anyway, we were told that we still have to be careful about what we post about him online.  We cannot post any “identifiers”, so we cannot say his Ch name, his date of birth, or where he is located at this point in time.

We are hoping to ship a care package to him shortly.  Our adoption agency is finalizing a program in which we’ll ship a care package through them to him.  We’re excited to send him a picture of our family, and a few other items for him to play with/wear.

What’s next:  Our dossier is now on it’s way to translation where it will be translated into Ch.  We are now also starting the infamous wait for LOA (Letter of Acceptance).  Once our dossier is out of translation (OOT), they will start the process of issuing our LOA.  It will take 2-3 months to receive our LOA.  After that we can file all the immigration paperwork here (another set of immigration paperwork), as well as apply for visas.  We still think we will travel sometime in August to get him.

While we are waiting LOA, we’re going to start preparing for him like you would a new baby.  We’re starting to shop around for furniture, and get all the required items you need for a new child (i.e. car seat, clothing, bedding, mattress, etc).  We are getting some hand me downs, and are super thankful and excited to get those items!!  He will around 18 months old (or a little less) when we bring him home, so he will be in a crib still.  Children in orphanages are kept in cribs for a lot longer (years longer) than we keep them in cribs (most people move kids into a toddler bed between 18-24 months), so he will more than likely remain in a crib for some time.  Anyway, we have a lot to do—now—as things will start moving at super-sonic speed once we receive our LOA.

Kathryn:  We have been telling Kathryn that she was going to be getting a brother or sister from Ch.  She’s been praying for “brother/sister” for quite some time now.  Last week we were able to tell her that she is getting a brother, and his name is Evan.  She has seen his pictures a few times, and is thrilled to be getting a brother!  Occasionally she’ll tell us that she wants "2 brothers sisters".  I told her that she is getting one brother, and if she wants anymore that she’s going to have to talk to God about it ;)  Anyway, we’ve been working with her over the last week, explaining that she’s going to have to share her toys and Mommy and Daddy.  She’s been catching on and telling us that she’s going to be happy to share us all with him.  I pulled some of her old books (mostly young baby board books) off the shelf to put up in his room, and she started pulling every book off the shelf saying she wanted to give it to Evan.  I love her sweet heart!  We also started potty training this week, and she is catching on fast!  She’s been quite the champ!  Anyway, please pray for her (and us) as there’s going to be a lot of change—change that is going to be challenging for all of us (change is good, though)!