Wonderful news!!!!

As I've done once a week for the past several weeks, I once again called the Hague adoption office to find out if our I-800 A petition to adopt from a foreign country has been approved.  This meant  approving our homestudy, too, without requiring additional or changed wording.  I called, and the secretary said, "You have been assigned an officer, and her name is..."  Then she said, "Let me transfer you."  She told me that we were approved on the 16th and that it is on its way through the mail!  That is GREAT, since our other dossier documents went to the Consulate earlier this week.  Now when Bethany receives THEM back, we won't have to wait extra long before the immigration comes back from the Consulate either, and they will all go off to China together.  :)  God is great!!

Thank you so much for all your prayers.  God must have known my patience was wearing pretty thin, given the wait for that and the wait for my husband's car to be fixed, because it looks like-- we hope-- that is on its way to a fix now, too (after being to several car shops that find something else to charge us for).  The next wait is our initial approval from the Consulate, but I don't think that's supposed to take too long.

Also, I guess I can tell you now, that if we like our son's given Chinese name, we will keep it, but if we don't think it would sound right or if it would be hard to pronounce over here, we will change it to Gabriel, and his middle name will be Song.  That's if we get a boy, and chances are we will, according to everyone we've spoken with.  :)  (If we are matched with a girl, we'll happily accept that referral too, but we'll be starting the name search over then!  Gabriella is out of the question.)

Things are moving right along, and so am I for now!

Until next time,

Jenn