Getting Started

After much prayer we decided to begin to build our family through adoption and we felt God leading us to adopt internationally. We began our research in mid-2005 and in January we met with our friends Ralph and Melinda so that they could help answer some of the questions we had regarding international adoption and how to select an agency. We continued to pray and seek God after speaking with them and felt led to pursue an adoption from the People’s Republic of China. On February 21st we mailed our adoption application to Harrah's AIM. March 1st was an exciting day as we received news that we were accepted by Harrah's. Our adoption journey had officially begun! After five months preparing our paperwork here in the United States, we sent our dossier (official paperwork) to China. We are now at the point in our journey where we are waiting to receive a referral. Currently it is taking the China Center of Adoption Affairs about 17 months to match a family with a child after the paperwork is logged into their system. Our log-in date is August 30, 2006. So far we are about seven months into our "official" wait.