My mind is spinning

I don't even know where to start.  I guess I'll start with the news that our letter seeking confirmation, or letter of acceptance, or what ever you want to call it has arrived!  We have been officially approved by China to adopt little T!  I am still in a state of shock, I mean with so many things going wrong at so many of the steps along the way I was never really sure we'd get this far.

Our LOA/LSC arrived at our agency on 6/5 and arrived at our house on 6/6  In the Fed Ex envelope was all the important papers we needed to formally accept T's file and get started on the immigration portion of the adoption.....Or were they?

Of coarse I went over everything with a fine tooth comb and realized very quickly that the very same mistake that probably kept T from finding a family sooner was never fixed.  That is that the English translation of her file was for another child.  A child with a VERY serious possibly fatal disease.  I was able to get a copy of the true translation for Ts file in March of last year so I knew it was available "somewhere".  When I talked to our agency in August of last year to see if they would ask for the waivers we needed they went ahead and sent me her file so I could make sure I wanted to adopt her. (LOL) Well the file they sent me was wrong....still, which meant anyone else seeing her file was going to be getting that wrong information from them too.  I ended up sending the agency the correct file.  Now here we are 10 months after that and when I needed them to send me the file to send to USCIS it was STILL WRONG!  This could have caused a ton of issues for our I800 approval but thankfully I still have the original file here and printed out a new one to send.

Then came the money part.  I was thinking I had more money in the bank then I did (don't we always) and the letter from my agency said we owed 5900 that day.  YIKES  I don't have that!  I went back and forth with them figuring out how to get that paid and found out we didn't owe 5900 that day we owed SIX THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED....yup another thousand more.  (they require a deposit of 1000.00 if you do not prepay all your post placement visits before you receive your child...we prepay them but only when the first one happens 2 weeks after we come home, so we have to pay another 1500.00 then and won't see the other 1000.00 for 5 years when post placement visits are done)  Thank the Lord that we had 1000.00 left from our JSC grant, they requested the 4000.00 from Show Hope and I managed to scrape together the 1900.00 that was left.  (not sure if I'll be eating anything for the next month or so but I got it out) 

I should be excited right?  I should be planning what to take to China, what to wear, all those fun things right?  Instead I'm sitting here near panic again over the 10-12,000 we still need to be able to travel and the only 8 weeks or so to come up with it.  Our original plan to borrow from his 401K was shot flat (they do not do loans from them) The second was to ask for an adoption loan from The ABBA fund which is no interest.  Our pastor will not sign the letter without seeking permission from the entire congregation.  I don't have time for that, it takes them (ABBA fund) up to 6 weeks to decide and who knows how long it will take this to come before the congregation, I need to pay for travel in 8 weeks if I expect to leave in about 10.  I am only seeing the impossible right now.  I mean, yeah God is in the impossible business but what does that look like?  Where do we go from here?  How does 10-12,000.00 just show up?  I mean it's not like a stranger is just going to walk up to me and say, hey you look like you can use 12K so here you go.  We don't have great credit so I'm not sure if we qualify for a "regular" adoption loan.  We don't own a home so we can't get a line of credit that way.  I don't know what we are going to do.  Our last 2 fund raisers made less then 1000.00 total for 2 of them.  I need a better idea AND FAST.

Please, PLEASE be in prayer for us.  I always questioned how someone could go into an adoption so unprepared.  I always wondered what happened if people didn't get the money they need.  I certainly never imagined I would BE one of those people.   I feel so horrible right now, what if we can't do this?  What happens to little T if that last amount of money doesn't come in?  I can't even let my brain go there because it's too scary but I have to.  I have used up plan A, B, C and I don't yet have a plan D. If anyone has any ideas for BIG fundraisers,  (I do appreciate offers for a sales party here or there but 40-50 after getting my friends on the hook to buy something they don't need isn't going to work at this late in the game.)  I need them.  If anyone knows of someone with an extra 10-12K just laying around who would love to donate it to our agency in our name (so they get the tax write off) let me know and I'll get our agency's name out to them. :D  Other than that, just pray for a miracle, because that is exactly what it is going to take at this point.