Amazing news!

What an amazing week it has been !!!!!

Last week, on 5/2, this email found its way to us.  James finally has his EP - this is the one piece of paperwork that we needed to bring him home for the last year.  

With this approval the agency tells us to plan on another 2-4 weeks before you recieve travel call. Several things still need to happen.... but the final thing that needs to happen is a Visa Interview at the embassy in Seoul, Korea. 

This morning I called Washington, DC to check on the status of my sons adoption file. I expected to hear the same thing that I did on Friday...That they were still waiting on the P3 packet ( the embassy sent the packet to the agency after our petition to adopt James was approved by the USCIS and it gets returned to the embassy when all paperwork is completed). Today that was not the case.

Today they said "he has a visa interview on 5/8".

I didn't quite get just what that meant - I repeated it - and then my mom shouted out that is tomorrow.

It was hard to believe. I didn't expect it for at least another week.

As the tears streamed down and I was filled with emotion I decided I had to call - Again!!!

Just in case I didn't hear right.... Just in case it was a mistake.

Guess what, it wasn't - the voice on the other end this time said - Tomorrow!!!

And with Korea being 13 hours ahead of us .....right now.... it is 5/8 in Korea.

Within the next 24 hours this little boy will finally have all the paperwork he needs to come

join his forever family at home.

What happens next ?!?!?

Well, my heart has already started beating out of my chest when the phone rings. We now must wait for our "Travel Call".  The phone will ring and since we are an escorting family they will tell us when James will be arriving. Several people have had this call come before the VI appointment even happened but most get the call a day or two after. I am definitely thinking that it will happen before the end of the week. Ahhhh!!!!

Please keep James and his foster family in your prayers.

While I am crying tears of joy that James will be completing his visa interview in Korea today and that he is so close to coming home his foster mother will surely be crying different tears. She is going to wake up knowing that her days are limited with the little boy that she has loved for so long. I couldn't imagine loving him for well over a year knowing that a time would come when it was time to say goodbye.

When I was in Korea a few weeks ago his foster mother gave me an album filled with pictures of his time with her and the rest of his foster family. They are incredibly hard to look at knowing that pretty soon every person in the pictures is going to experience a big loss. For over a year they were a family and now all of that is about to change. Please pray for his foster Omma and the rest of the family - that they find peace knowing that James has a forever family that loves him so much and that I will honor my promise to send frequent updates so she can continue to watch him grow. 

Please pray for James. That this transition isn't too hard on him and that the grief from losing the family that he has been with for so long isn't too painful. I know that initially we are in for a rough transition but he is far too little to understand everything that is about to happen and all that is about to change.

I pray that he will find comfort in my arms as he works through the loss of finding comfort in his Omma's arms.

I love him so much and wish that I could shelter him from the pain and grief that he is about to go through. I have to remind myself that foster care is temporary and soon enough his foster family will have another child to take care of until they have a forever family.

I have to remember that adoption is born out of loss...and this is the last loss of family that James will ever have to go through. That we are his forever family - the family that his birth mother wished for him to have.

We are the forever family that his foster family has showed him pictures of for over a year.

Pretty soon, we will all be together..... forever.

Miracles do happen - God is so good!!!