Where we are now, and the next steps

Some have asked what the process to adopt Mary will look like and how long it will take to travel to China to meet her. So we thought we would outline the upcoming steps and terminology for everyone. 

Overall, we have been advised by our agency that once we accepted our referral of Mary that it would take 4-6 months until travel to China. This is the amount of time it takes for the different paperwork to be completed between the two countries. Since we accepted her referral at the end of July, 4-6 months takes us to the end of either November, December or January. 

We are hoping to travel in November, as Mary turns two in the beginning of December and it would be wonderful to celebrate with her. With Sylvie, we were able to travel at four months, so we are keeping our fingers crossed that the paperwork and file reviews go quickly.

The following is an explanation of the next steps that we are going through to complete the adoption process.

1) LOI (Letter of Intent): We submitted our LOI to our agency who translated and submitted it to the China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA). This document informs the Chinese government of our "intent to adopt" Mary and outlines our care and nurturing plan for her.

2) PA (Pre Approval): The Chinese government (CCAA) has assessed and "approved" our Letter of Intent. 

3) LSC (Letter Seeking Confirmation from the Adopter): Now that we have received PA, the Chinese government (CCAA) will now take a closer look at our entire dossier we forwarded earlier in June. This includes our home study, letters of employment, criminal record checks, clearance from our Provincial Ministry of Families, copies of our birth certificates, passports and marriage license. CCAA will next issue a formal offer to place Mary with us. 

The formal offer is called the Letter of Seeking Confirmation from Adopter (LSC). It will be delivered to us through the BC government and our provincial adoption agency. We sign the LSC and return it to CCAA.This step can take as long as 90 days to complete. With Sylvie it only took a little over a month, this is what we are hoping for again. 

4) NoC (Notice of Traveling to China for Adoption): CCAA will then issue an invitation for us to travel to China to adopt Mary. The travel date is usually 6 to 9 weeks after we have returned the signed LSC. 

We have a little side bar on the side of the time line it took for all the paperwork to be completed with Sylvie's adoption and we have now added a second bar for Mary's. Hope this answers many of the questions our family and friends have had about this process!