Translated!

Earlier today, I made the comment to Alicia that it seems there are a number of areas of life right now that are "in transition, and I just have to wait".  At church, we are hiring a new Pastor of Youth and Family Ministries, but he doesn't begin until November 1...waiting!  Yesterday, I sent in my last assignment for my doctoral work before beginning my dissertation, which I cannot begin until it is approved...waiting!  For the adoption, our paperwork continues to be in the process of being translated...waiting!  I gave blood this afternoon, and as I sat there waiting for a pint of blood to be drained from my arm...waiting...Alicia came in and held out her phone to show me an email from our agency.  The translation of our paperwork has been completed.  There is still nothing for us to do, but at least our waiting has entered another stage.
So what is the next step in the process?  With the translation complete, our paperwork has been sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for authentication, after which it will go to IHNFA for review.  IHNFA is the government agency of Honduras that oversees adoptions.  Once our dossier is reviewed and approved then we move to the stage of being matched up with a child.  We have not been given a timeline for all of this, and that is OK, since the timeline for translation was "2-3 weeks", so we were told in the middle of August when our paper work was sent to Honduras.  It is still our hope that we will know the identity of our daughter before Christmas, but there is a good possibility we may need to wait until the spring.  We are rejoicing in the fact that we now move to the next stage of waiting.  Thank you for patiently waiting with us!