Concrete Travel Dates!

WOW! After so much stress over our re-fingerprint appointment and travel date - today we had some fantastic news! Our travel coordinator called to let us know that we will be flying to China on December 14th!!!!

Our answer to much prayer: Last Monday we received a call that we had our Travel Approval. We could choose to leave on December 6th or December 13th. The 13th sounded good to us but one thing was missing...our updated fingerprints with the USCIS. They expire on December 12th and we had an appointment to get them redone on December 13th. Well we couldn't get a Consulate appointment until our fingerprints were redone. So flying to China on the 13th wasn't going to happen unless the USCIS expedited our appointment.

Our adoption agency told us to contact the USCIS to see if we could get them moved to an earlier date. Shelly emailed them on Monday (Nov. 26th) - no reply, gave them time to answer on Tuesday - no reply, emailed again on Wednesday - no reply, so Shelly called them. After a half hour of finding the right person to speak with she was told that the ONLY way to contact them is by email and they get back right away. Shelly said she has done that and the lady just said "you'll need to wait to hear back, there is nothing I can do for you". So on Thursday Shelly emailed them two times - still no reply. By Friday, November 30th Shelly sent her 5th email and Mike contacted Senator Norm Coleman's office to help us out. We did hear back from the USCIS on Friday and we were told "there's no appointments available and so you will have to keep the appointment on the 13th". Meanwhile, Mike had contact with Norm Coleman's office and they were willing to help. Our Social Worker got wind and called us asking us to give her a chance at speaking with the person from the USCIS because she has worked with her many times. What we didn't know is in MN the USCIS doesn't want families to contact them, only social workers. That's why she ignored all of Shelly's pleas. We didn't know so we didn't tell our Social Worker what was going on.

Whew...so anyway...Stacie, our SW took over and contacted the USCIS for us. Meanwhile, our adoption agency was thinking of putting us on a plane the day after on the 14th and joining our travel group a day late. We were thrilled that this could even happen! So on Monday, December 3rd (yesterday) everything pulled together. We have our re-fingerprinting on the 13th and then we fly out on the 14th. We just need to pray that they will clear here in the US so we can finalize Jiang Ting's adoption on December 27th. Then we all fly back home on December 29th!

We thank God and all the people that were praying us through this!