Almost there!!

God is making things happen!!  We were granted expedition by the USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) and our I800A was approved on 9/9/2011 - just hours after Alex had his fingerprints done!  Amazing!  We got our I797 form (the official written approval letter) in the mail on 9/12/2011 and I was off to the Secretary of State and Chinese Consulate on 9/13 for certification and authentication of our documents - the I797 and that dog gone homestudy (which we ended up not revising again) .  And of course, there were obstacles along the way - who knew that I was supposed to submit the copy of the I797 and not the original and who knew that I had to write a cover letter for the copied I797 stating that the copy is in fact a copy of the original and real approval letter? And, who knew that I would have to have my cover letter notarized?!  Thank God for the nice lady notary at Citibank that had mercy on me (after 4 other banks turned me away since I didn't bank with them)  and was willing to notarize my letter. I was finally ready to go to the Chinese Consulate for a quick authentication of the forms - or so I thought.  If I got my forms submitted to them by 11am, I could pick them up later that day. Marvelous! :)  I had hoped to get to the Consulate when they opened at 9am but the snafu at the SOS delayed me a bit but I ended up getting there at 9:25am.  Not bad, I thought, until I entered the waiting room and saw that it was standing room only.  Apparently the day before was a Chinese holiday (I guess I'm going to have to learn these things) and the consulate was closed.  That meant everyone in the midwest that had "go to Chinese Consulate" on their To Do list was there.  I took the number from the handy, dandy machine and almost gasped out loud.  I was number 80!   And they were on number 19.  And  I only had 95 minutes before it would be 11am and my documents and I would turn into a pumpkin (and miss the same day service deadline).  So I waited, and waited, and waited. (This seems to be a common occurrence lately).  Finally, my number was called.  It was exactly 10:58am.  I rushed to the window, turned in my forms and asked if I would be done later that day.  She said "yes!" :) What a relief!!!  And then she said, "Uh oh, we never do same day service for homestudies so you have to come back tomorrow." :(  (Sometimes I think that homestudy is out to get me!)  I begged and begged but to no avail and surrendered.  I took the little pink receipt and went home unfulfilled.  At least the mission was half- accomplished.
I went back the very next day, eager to get this done with, and stood in line again.  When I got to the "Pick up only" window, the gentleman looked and looked for my documents, couldn't find them and said they weren't ready and to come back at 2pm.  It was 11am.  Sigh.  I knew what came next.  I had to sit and wait again - for 3 hours.  Thankfully I brought my laptop and decided to go to the local Starbucks and get some work done.  Time passed and it was 1:30pm.  I was tempted to go back to the Consulate early but was afraid of annoying the man by coming before 2pm so I waited just a little bit more.  When I got back to the Consulate, just minutes before 2pm I realized that I was the only one that did not wish to annoy the man because now there were 22 people who got there early and were in line ahead of me to pick up their documents as well.  Apparently 2pm is the assigned time for everyone to come and pick up their documents.  Double sigh.  I took my place at the end of the line and ... you guessed it, waited.  Finally at 2:30pm I had my beloved documents in my hand.  Thank you Lord!  I sent everything by FedEx to our agency and we expect to be DTC (Documents to China) on Friday September 16!!  Please Lord, make it happen!! And Lord, um, how am I doing with the wait (and wait and wait) lessons?  If you think I'm getting the hang of it, feel free to kindly speed things up a bit.  :)   Either way, I will wait on You, Lord and I will choose to trust You and Your timing.  Amen.