I-600 Acknowledgment Receipt

Well, one more big step down in the rest of this process. Early this morning we received our I-600 Acknowledgment Receipt via email from USCIS (Immigration).

What this means. This is NOT our travel approval. However, this means that Immigration has received our paperwork and now have acknowledged it. We can start counting days from here for travel approval. USCIS/DOS gets 60 business days for average cases which comes to about 3 months. However, if they want to, they can take much longer or much shorter.

The family right ahead of us in the process from our agency just received their travel approval in 2 weeks, but the family before them took 4 months, before them 2 months, before them 3 months. You get the picture.

Please pray:

1) That we get our travel approval sooner rather than later. We'd really like to be home with plenty of time before Christmas...especially considering that the boys are not coming with us.

2) That Haven would stay healthy, loved, and well taken care of.

3) For the same family that received a 2 week travel approval. They leave tommorow for Vietnam to bring home their little boy, Logan. He was born in April.

They will also hopefully get to get new pictures of Haven for us and maybe even a length. We don't have any measurements yet. I'm sending with them for Haven, a small sized afghan that I made and a picture of our family for the orphanage workers.

4) For the Lord's strength to get everything done. Our To Do List is very long. None of it could be done before our referral so now we're scrambling. Things like travel shots, visas, updating our will, getting travel meds and RX, start packing, etc.

We did get the boys' bunkbeds put together and little E has moved in with big E. That was a story in itself. Thank goodness for a neighbor with a drill press. Now the ladder is about 4" too, short. Soooo...who knows? Nothing is ever easy...hmmmm.

Haven's room has been painted. When we get all the decorations up, we'll post a picture.

5) Another big item on the To Do List is renewing our Home Study. We have our Home Visit with our Social Worker tonight. So pray that all goes well. We've already been refingerprinted which required a drive to the state capital.

Thanks again,
Shae