The last few weeks have been very discouraging for us. As you know, we had waited for months to get our completed Home Study, and as soon as we had that, we submitted our form to the US Department of Citizenship and Immigration Services. We then heard back from them that they needed additional information from our Home Study agency. We were shocked and confused. We had never heard of them asking for this information before. We contacted our adoption agency so that they could help us figure out exactly what CIS wanted from us. Then they explained to our Home Study agency that they needed to write one additional paragraph at the beginning of our homestudy. They even helped with the wording of this paragraph. As far as we know, the Home Study agency has not finished the update they needed to do, and now the woman who was handling this for us us out of the office all week. We are frustrated and discouraged by the fact that they do not seem to understand the urgency here. Then, we found out last week that there has been a change to the requirements for our paperwork, and the majority of our forms will have to be redone. This is not our adoption agency’s fault, and they are doing everything they can to help us, but this is still terrible news. All of our papers are due in China by December 13th, and I don’t know how we can possibly have them all redone and submitted in time for that. We are going to do our very best, and pray that God will give us speed. Also, we are still short of the funds that we need to submit our dossier, and we have to have that very soon now. We have submitted our first grant application, and have started on a second, so please pray that God will bless us on that front as well. It all feels pretty dark and hopeless right now, but we know that all things are possible with God, so we trust Him to make this happen.