What is LOA?

LOA stands for Letter of Acceptance.  This is a HUGE step!  Parents wait and wait for this point in the process.  This is when China asks you to accept your specific child and officially links them to your family.  Currently, we have pre-approval.  Up to this point, all of the approvals we do are generic and could be for any child.  Our sweet baby girl is on a hold of sorts in China.  When we get LOA, there is a mad rush to check that we accept our precious daughter, sign, and mail back that same day if possible!  After we receive, sign and mail this important document, Mark and I always go out to dinner to celebrate!

This step is the most variable!  Currently, it is averaging 30 days.  It usually takes 2-3 months.  Some families have waited over 100 days.  There is no rhyme or reason for who goes quickly and who waits.  Praying we are in one of the fast lanes!  And that the quick timelines continue!

There are 4 stages to this process.  At the end, LOA is issued and mailed to our agency.
1. Login
2. Translation
3. Review
4. Matching 

Our agency generally checks on Mondays and will update us as we progress through the steps.  There are going to be some long weekends and tears on Mondays, if we don't have any progress. ;)

Thanks for all of your prayers.  We can't wait to get to this sweet baby girl!!