Little Ruby, tiny treasure, my baby, my dear, little one I'll be with you very soon, very soon. Tender heart take your comfort in the arms of those near 'til the day I will hold you my baby.

Friday, December 8, 2006

Bethany Christian Services

We had several more meetings with Bethany (BCS) over the next six weeks. We were told that this first stage was really the only step we would have any control over. The name of the game is "hurry up and wait". So we sent off for all of the necessary documents from Texas and Florida. We had every thing triple authenticated by city, county and state. And finally, we finished all of the paperwork, asked every question and turned our dossier into BCS. Bethany checked it over and sent it off the next day to Grand Rapids to have the documents go through further authentication. On December 29, 2005 our dossier was finally on it's way to China! DTC 12-29-05!

The next step would be to wait for our LID or log-in date. Bethany said it would be anywhere from 2-6 weeks. But knowing that the Chinese New Year puts a halt on all adoption processes, we knew it could be longer... The LID determines your place in line to receive a referral and an invitation to travel. A referral packet from China contains a photo of your baby, medical documents, travel instructions and documents to travel with. The referral wait time fluctuates throughout the year, depending upon how many babies are processed each month. When we started the process, the "wait time" from LID to referral was 6-8 months. A friend of ours had a wait time of one year and it ended up being only 6 months, so it could change.

Our LID (login date) is January 17th. Upon receiving that LID, we were told we could get our referral as early as October 17, 2006. But that is not the way it played out. :( That date has come and gone. We are now looking at Late July or August of 2007 before that famous stork brings a little package with a picture of our Ruby...

No comments: