MinLan Matters: December 2013

Monday, December 30, 2013

So Sorry For The Overload...

Friends, thank you for being so tolerant of my constant Facebook sharing….

I know I have been filling up your feed with fundraisers, pictures of orphans looking for their forever families and adoption details.

There are many days that I just hate to post ONE more thing, but then I see sweet MinLan's face and I do it all to get her HOME, so I share again….

We have A LOT of things going on right now and I feel like I can not do them all justice! I thought I would put together this post and you'd be able to see everything all in one place. Scroll down to find what you are looking for! Thank you so much to each and everyone of you who has been reading and following our journey. We thank God for you.

AMAZON Fundraiser

Planning to do some shopping on Amazon? Please click our link below and then add things to your cart. A percentage of your purchase will go towards our adoption at no extra cost to you.

www.tinyurl.com/amazonminlan

COFFEE Fundraiser

Love coffee? Or looking for a great gift? Please shop at our fundraiser link below. A percentage of the purchase will go towards bringing MinLan home.

https://justlovecoffee.com/about/beneficiary/parrisfamily/

PUZZLE Fundraiser

Click below and sponsor a puzzle piece for only $2.50 to help bring MinLan home!

http://www.gofundme.com/minlanmatters

T-SHIRT Fundraiser

Click below to purchase one of MinLan's adoption fundraiser t-shirts to help bring her home! We must sell 50 shirts by January 14th for the order to be placed.

http://teespring.com/minlanmatters

RECIPES For Cookbook Fundraiser

Click below to enter your family's favorite recipes. Login in with username jmparris and the password is banana671

https://www.simplycookbooks.com

SEVENLY Fundraiser - this week only!

This fundraiser is AWESOME! It is helping MANY Reece's Rainbow families including ours! MinLan is listed here under her file name of "Laura". Click the link below and shop for some awesome t-shirts, toys and prints. You are going to love all of these products!

http://www.sevenly.org

MinLan's Birthday Celebration

I can't believe our sweet MinLan is about to turn TWO! So sad that we are not with her to celebrate but grateful that this is the LAST birthday she will spend without her family.

I felt like we should do something to celebrate our sweet precious girl. Could you help me?

Each year when we throw our kids' birthday parties, we always ask for "no gifts". Our little ones are beyond blessed and we truly just want to celebrate with our friends and family and not focus on the gifts.

But for MinLan's birthday, I'm breaking that tradition just this one time and asking you to give if you are able. Would you consider giving $2 in honor of her 2nd birthday to her Reece's Rainbow account? This will help with our travel expenses and I think with your help we could raise enough in honor of her birthday to buy her plane ticket home.

Please visit her page and click the yellow button beneath her picture. You can then type in your $2.00 donation.

http://reecesrainbow.org/59580/sponsorparris

Thank you so much for helping us celebrate our girl. We are honored to have each of you on this journey with us and so thankful for all the ways you have helped us bring her home. Thank you for praying for her. Thank you for giving of your time and finances. You have truly blessed our family. God bless.

Thank you so much friends for our prayers and willingness to help our family!!!

Details coming this week about our upcoming auction with the Casey family!

Love,
Jenifer

Another Great Day!

So excited for more adoption progress yesterday!

We got this email today from the courier that is taking our Visa applications to the Chinese consulate for us! They will be ready in a week and our courier will go pick them up and overnight them back to us! Our passports will be ready to take us to China! WooHOOOOO!!!

We also got a text and an email from USCIS saying that they had received our I-800 paperwork! Remember the I-800A paperwork we talked about? That was for Bryan and I to be clear to adopt by USCIS…the I-800 is for MinLan!

After this approval, more paperwork to come but SOOOOOOOOOO WORTH IT!!!!! We are getting so close!

We are coming sweet girl,

Mommy

Signed, Sealed and Delivered!

Would you just look at that beautiful piece of paper?!?!?!

We received it from our agency on Christmas Eve…best Christmas yet! We both signed it….

And sent it back the very same day! We also sent a copy of our LOA with our I-800 paperwork and our Visa applications! Bryan is such a good Daddy! He drove all the way to Anniston, found this obscure Fedex box located on the side of an office building and waited for the driver to show up to personally hand him our packages! And BONUS, he took pictures!!! He is DEFINITELY an adoptive parent! HA!

Now we wait for our I-800 approval, then more paperwork! We hope to travel mid-March! Please pray with us friends for a continued smooth, FAST process!

We are coming sweet girl,
Mommy

Monday, December 23, 2013

LOA!!!!

We found out on December 19th that our LOA had shown up in the computer! Considered our "soft LOA", we were ecstatic!

Our agency told us that it could be up to two weeks before the hard copy of the LOA actually arrived at the agency.

I prayed we would receive it by Christmas.

The phone call came from our agency this morning! Only FOUR DAYS later!!! Two days before Christmas! God is good!

All of our forms are filled out and ready to go…our I-800, our I-864W and our Visa applications! Just waiting on the LOA to come from Fedex tomorrow! Praying it comes early in the morning to allow us time to get it turned around and back in the mail tomorrow!

Our LOA is basically a fancy letter from China that Bryan and I will both sign and mail back saying that we accept MinLan…our Letter Of Acceptance. Once we have that piece of paper, we can send in our I-800 form which is where the US government says that MinLan is basically allowed to immigrate into this country and therefore we are able to adopt her. We hope to mail it tomorrow or Thursday at the latest. That will take a few weeks to get back. Then we are waiting on some other things so we can fill out the DS-260 for MinLan's visa. Then we do what is called an Article 5. Once this is done, China will issue our TA which is our Travel Approval and we can buy plane tickets and GO GO GO!!!! Our agency says we will most likely travel in March. The earlier in March the better!!!

Thanks to a sweet fellow adoptive Momma who is an awesome adoption "date cruncher", she calculates that we are most likely looking at a "Gotcha Day" of either March 10th or March 17th! Woohoooo!!!!

We are coming sweet girl!

Love,

Momma