Welcome to our "Bringing Eli Home" page. Eli, Elijah Dale Monks, is our little boy from China who we hope to bring home sometime during the fall of this year. If you haven't been following along via e-mail updates, Eli is in the Guangdong province in Southeast China which is where Guangzhou is located. To find it on the map, look just outside of Hong Kong. Two weeks in Guangzhou and then home with Eli. We have been at this for 2 years now and cannot wait to bring him home. Eli will turn 5 years old in November, just 2 days younger than our youngest daughter Lilly. Their older sisters, Maggie and Molly, are also excited for us to "get the boy home".
The past couple of weeks have been exciting and difficult. We received our Letter of Acceptance (LOA) on July 30, met with Karla at Lifeline in Birmingham, signed the form, and returned home. China would have received the form by the following week which is when the clock started again. It's 2 to 4 weeks of waiting for our Travel Approval (TA) and a date at the US consulate after which we travel approximately 2 weeks later to Guangzhou.
