WE GOT OUR FINGERPRINT APPOINTMENT AND HOMESTUDY CONFIRMATION FROM IMMIGRATION!

On Tuesday, I went to the mailbox and found two envelopes from USCIS, the US immigration services. There was one addressed to me and one addressed to my husband. I was so excited because I had a feeling of what was in the envelopes. THEY WERE OUR FINGERPRINT APPOINTMENTS. We got them in record time. We have to be at the immigration office on Monday, November 3 at 8 a.m. to be fingerprinted. That is one more hurdle to cross toward bringing our baby home from Taiwan.

That was the first bit of good news this week. I had also been concerned about whether USCIS had received our approved homestudy from our homestudy agency. For anyone who has worked with USCIS in the past, it is typically very hard to get a straight answer out of them if you are able to talk to them at all. There is not a phone number to call at our local USCIS so I had to take the chance of e-mailing them. I did this when we were in the process of adopting our daughter from China, and was never able to get them to respond to me. I was completely shocked when I got a response from them within 24 hours. WOW! They not only told me that they had my homestudy, which I was estatic about, but they also gave me information that I hadn't even asked for. WOW! TALK ABOUT SERVICE! They told me that the process time for them to review my file after we were fingerprinted was approximately 8 to 10 weeks. They said they were sorry that the wait was so long and they hoped to speed up the process, but that was the current time frame with their current workload. I in turned sent them a very nice thank you e-mail for their quick reply and hard work. I have learned that you get a lot more out of the officers at USCIS if you, as they say, "kill them with kindness", rather than get demanding with them.

Anyway, we are so excited that things are moving along. After this, we just wait. Our homestudy is in Taiwan and ready to be translated as soon as a referral is made. We really have no idea how long that will be since we are doing an independent adoption. It will happen in God's time though. He knows where our baby is right now, and we just pray that he will make us ready when the time comes.

Please continue to pray for us, especially our finances. We are trying everything we can think of to raise the money that we will need to pay for all of the adoption costs. We know that God can give us what we need when we need it, but sometimes He uses other people to carry out His work. If you would like to help with our adoption, please take a look at our other blog which shows ways that you can help. Please share this with your family and friends.

www.henleytaiwanadoptionfundraisers.blogspot.com

CONFIRMATION FROM USCIS

We received a receipt from USCIS in Memphis, Tennessee that they received our I600A and our filing fee. We hope to have our fingerprint appointment in about a month. We know that our homestudy was sent to them, but the social worker forgot to send it Fedex so that we would have a tracking number. ARGH!!! We have no way of knowing right now if USCIS has our homestudy or not. I am going to check with them as soon as we get our fingerprint appointment. If they don't have it, the social worker said that she would overnight it to them. Please pray that we can get confirmation that they have our approved homestudy.