William: good question. Your proposal sounds like a solid one, and you have two options for going forward with it. First, just submit the credit as you suggest, with the supporting scanned-in hard copy and an explanation in the 'special circumstances' box, even if the 'points document' shows '0'. The reviewer will let you know via the review comments if your strategy was an acceptable one. Second, you can get approval BEFORE you submit your credits/prereqs by sending in a Project CIR, which you can read more about here: http://www.gbci.org/Certification/Resources/cirs.aspx.
I hope this is helpful!