Visas! Thank you Kelly!

This is me and my friend Kelly. If you have been following my blog for awhile then you know that Kelly lives in Louisiana and we met over three years ago after realizing we both had the same LID for our China adoptions. Kelly and I became fast friends and have exchanged many phone calls, emails and text messages over the last few years. We have been planning our trip to China, our girls being friends and maintaining our long distance friendship after our adoptions are complete for three years now. When the wait became so long, we both looked different places to hopefully complete our adoption including domestic adoptions, China's special needs program and even other countries. I received a text message from Kelly back in February with her wanting to know if I could talk...I couldn't because I was at work but I knew instantly what she had to tell me. I knew that she had been matched with a baby off of China's SN list. Kelly says that it was so hard to call and tell me that after we had waited so long to walk this journey together. I was thrilled for her because she has waited so patiently and faithfully for four years but I was so sad for me. I wanted us to go together. I wanted our daughters to be the same age, I wanted red couch photos at the White Swan together. I was being selfish! Kelly's daughter Eva(go here to see her) is beautiful and I can't wait to meet her. Fast forward two months to April 21st. This is the day that we were matched with Miss Ruthie. Kelly and her family were still in their long wait for LOA...it had been way too long! We received our PA and then six days later, our LOA. We received our LOA before Kelly who had been waiting for almost 70 days on hers. Now it was my turn to make a hard phone call. Thankfully, Kelly received hers two days later and we both got them in the mail on the same day to sign and send back to China. Amazingly enough....they were both stamped in China on the same day...May 7, 2010. We know that God has heard our prayers of wanting to travel together! As hard as it was for Kelly and her family to wait 70 days for LOA, we now know the reason why....she was having to wait on us! Our other prayer has been that Eva and Ruthie would be close in age so that they could be friends and play together when our families get together. Eva is 23 months old and Ruthie is 20 months old! Thank you God for hearing our prayers! Now we are praying that our travel approvals arrive around the same time so that we can end up in Guangzhou, China for a week together with our girls!!

Our passports with Visa inside on the Chinese Consulate sign

When we received our LOA on May 5th, it also came with a list of things that we needed to do now. The first was to get our visa's. I started reading about the process and found that I was to use the Chinese consulate in Houston, TX and that you had to use a courier. You can't just mail your passports and visa application to them. I was worried sick about my passports being in the hands of a stranger. Two days later Kelly received her LOA with the same instructions. She proceeded to tell me that she wasn't using a courier because she didn't want someone else handling her passports. She was going to drive the three hours to Houston and handle it herself. Then she asked if I would like her to take mine as well. Ummm....let me think about that....YES!!! So, this past Monday Kelly drove to Houston and dropped off all of our passports so that they could receive the China visa stamp and then drove back on Thursday to pick them all up! Thank you so much Kelly for doing that for us! I felt so much better knowing that you had them in your care!! One more step checked off the list of things to do before travel! Now, if China would just hurry up with the travel approval and I would actually start packing, we'd be ready to go! :)