Thank you all for your prayers and support as we have worked to gather the documents for our dossier. As many of you know, we have had most of the pieces for over a week now, and we have been hoping to go to Columbus to get the state certifications that we need as our next step. We thought we were going to be able to go up last Friday, but then discovered that our medical forms had to be redone again. Fortunately, our doctor’s office was very understanding and willing to help us, and both doctors patiently filled out the forms three different times so that they met all of the requirements for China. We are very thankful to them! We were finally able to pick those up yesterday, so we planned to get their county certifications this morning, and then go up to Columbus this afternoon. Then, as we were getting ready to leave this morning, Greg noticed that our local police checks had our names written as Greg and Kristen Goodwin instead of Godwin. I can’t believe I missed that! I read over those forms several times and thought that I had checked everything. I called the woman at the sheriff’s department, and she agreed to fix the mistake and print them out again for us right away. So we left our house about 9:45 this morning, and headed nearly an hour south east to get the county certifications for our medical forms. Then we drove back up to Hamilton to pick up our police checks, and Greg took the kids to my parents’ house while I got the county certifications for those (They were from a different county than the medical forms, so they had to be done in a different office). Once the kids were settled in, he came back and picked me up, we grabbed lunch, and set off for Columbus. I started this post while we were sitting in the Secretary of State’s office, waiting while they processed all our forms. I was in the process of explaining that, if there are no mistakes, we would send these documents off tomorrow to a courier service that will get the federal certifications and the certifications from the Chinese Embassy. As I was typing all of that, the man at the Secretary of State’s office came out to tell us that they had successfully processed thirteen of our fourteen documents. We couldn’t believe it! Our marriage license has to be redone! Certified copies of marriage licenses (at least in Ohio) are signed by the Deputy Clerk at the judge’s office. But now, the Secretary of State will not attach the necessary certification unless they are signed by the judge himself. This is a new rule, and we didn’t have any idea. We are going to call tomorrow and find out if the judge will be available to sign our form in the morning, and if he is, we will go back to Columbus tomorrow afternoon and try again. We were very, very discouraged at first, but feel calm and peaceful now. We know that God will bring our daughters home to us in His perfect timing, and we are content to trust Him. We would appreciate your prayers during the day tomorrow.

Thanks,
Kristie