God's Butterfly Kisses

4/21/10
Well I finally feel like we got some sort of "break through" late yesterday afternoon! I received an e-mail from the gal at Congressman Bright's office who has been so kind in helping us out. She had been in contact with her Congressional contact and the orphan officer in Atlanta sent the following statement to her regarding our case:

Their I-600a approval expires in a few weeks. They need to fax me a free extension (signed). I can extend their I-600a and change the country if they will also re-send me another edition of their home study update and include a copy of their birth and marriage certificates.

You can only imagine the color that I saw after reading that statement....RED! The officer or someone at the USCIS office has had all this information since early March! The only thing that was missing was our request to extend our I-600a. When I realized late last week that our form was about to expire, I quickly did up a letter requesting the extension and resent everything that was mentioned with a Monday morning delivery to USCIS. Keep in mind, beside the extension request, this is the second time that I have sent the same information into USCIS.

I quickly responded back to Congressman Bright's office with the updated information and asked her to go back to her Congressional contact in hopes to finally get a closure on our case.

Meanwhile, I called our agency and our social worker. Our agency has been in desperate need of our home study for months, not so much our approval notice at this time. If the agency had our home study, they could send everything to China so we can at least get our LID (log in date) and start seeing referrals. Our social worker, however, would not release out home study until we got the approval from USCIS. So it has been a vicious circle for the last couple of months.

While talking to our social worker yesterday, she told me that she was putting our home study in the mail to me! To my surprise I said "WHAT"? I don't the approval from USCIS. Our case has been a very "unique" case from the beginning and we have had lots of "stumbles, mistakes and misunderstandings" going on between our agency, social worker and myself. We will be traveling to China on a I-600a form, which they no longer do, that form has been replaced with the I-800a form. As long as your I-600a application was submitted to immigration by March 2008, you would be "grandfathered" in under the I-600a, that applies to us. The two forms are very similar, except with the I-800a, the government made some changes. One of the changes being that the SW (social worker) could not release the HS (home study) until the family received the approval notice from USCIS. This is where our agency and SW found the loop hole. Our HS was turned into an I-800 HS or "Hague" do to China's requirements. However, we are traveling on the I-600, which does not require the SW to hold onto the HS until approval from USCIS. Praise the Lord! Two "breaks" in one day! So today I was able to take two steps forward, but never fear, I will be taking 3 steps backwards in the future! This is just how it goes.

I just screamed and have tears in my eyes, as the Fed Ex guy just rang our door bell! At 9:25 Central time today, I have 2 notarized copies of our home study in my hands!!!!!! Now I need to drive downtown Montgomery and get the County Certs on the Notary then off to the Alabama State House to get the State Certs for these documents. This is one perk of living in your states capital! I will have our final notarized, county and state certified HS with overnight delivery to our agency TODAY!

Meanwhile, our SW was contacting our officer at USCIS to make arrangements for anther HS to be sent to him so he can release our "renewed/revised" approval notice (I-797)hopefully very soon!

As I was explaining all this to my DH (dear husband) last night, he remarked at how he could never do what I have done and would have quit years ago. My response to him was.....I really could sit here and dwell on the fact that "in theory", I just lost 3 months of this process. We could have gotten our LID months ago and we could already even have had our referral, BUT, this was not in God's plan. I am a firm believer that things happen for a reason and this time that sometimes feels like "wasted" time will bring us to one of our greatest joys in life, another child!