Please pray...

Hello All, I have put off writing b/c I have been a little bit discouraged. Although we now have our Embassy Appointments, which are March 15 and March 19 (not 17), our son's passport is not in yet. We are unsure whose error this is since we are getting mixed answers. His passport should have been in weeks ago. Hopefully, this situation will be resolved before our Embassy dates. If not, the Embassy will have to reschedule our appointments since the passport is required, possibly costing us several more weeks of time.
I ask you to please pray with us about this. Daily if possible. We need your prayers. We thank you for your support. God has blessed us with many wonderful friends and family!

GOD IS SO GOOD!!!

We have our Embassy Dates!!!
March 15th is the file drop off date and March 17th is the Interview date! Our In-Country Coordinator will go to these for us. And about 3 weeks later, our Visa processing will be done and we will get our travel dates!!! It looks like we will be traveling in April!!! YAY!!!!! Thank you all for joining us on this journey! We will continue to give updates throughout our travel and after we return...God is so good and He is faithful all the time!!! PTL!!!

Come on Passport!!!

We are diligently praying for Isaiah's passport to come in! The Congo passport office is extremely slow and this is the only thing holding us up for making our Embassy Appointment in order to have our Visa's processed... I am reminded of the anticipation of childbirth. In the last month, there is excitement, apprehension, some healthy fears, but most of all, pure love for the child you will soon welcome into your lives. We have hit our 18th month since beginning this process. Yes, I would HATE to be pregnant for 18 months! So, in this respect, adoption is much much harder (I can say this since I did go through 3 pregnancies). And in a similar respect, we have no idea if our son will embrace us, fear us, or reject us. That is where pure trust comes in. God has asked us to adopt our son, so we must trust Him to prepare his heart for us... as we draw closer, we also must think about our journey across thousands of miles to receive our son into our lives. Yes, there will be danger, yes, there will be nerves going crazy, yes, there will be adrenaline rushing, and yes, there will be pure exhaustion! But we would not want it to be any other way! God is preparing the way for His name to be glorified! It should be an event of full-blown emotion! One of His orphans is coming HOME!!!! Hallelujah!!! We will give Him all praise and honor and glory!!! For the great things He has done!!! Join with us in bringing glory to His name!!!

T-shirts

We have found a really cool design for a tshirt that another adoptive family had made. We are trying to find the best prices for printing them. They are really cool. Here is what they look like:

more waiting...

So, apparently, our agency has to receive Isaiah's passport before they can make the Embassy Appointment. Ugh! So we are praying that it will arrive very soon! As the days grow closer, we are making preparations for travel. Bit by bit. Piece by piece. We are beginning the packing part. We have spent several days running around Walmart looking for items to take on our trip. Medications for fever, scabies, ear infections, upset tummy, etc... and not to mention diapers, wipes, bug spray with deet, food and snacks, clothes for our son, and much much more...this part is fun, but also exhausting. Are we forgetting anything? Do we have everything that we will need? Wow. It's enough to drive you crazy at times.
In the midst of it all, we are learning to sit at the feet of Jesus. To rest in His care and provision. To trust Him with the deepest issues of heart. He is enough. He is able. He is. And we must take a step back from the busy-ness of our lives and this journey and rest in His goodness.
Thank you all for taking this journey with us...and we are so grateful for your sweet prayers!

PTL!!!! Immigration Approval!!!!!

Praise the Lord and Hallelujah!!!!! We received Immigration Approval in the mail today!!! We are soooo excited!!!! We had to have it notarized and send it to our agency. We fedexed it to them asap and it will arrive tomorrow morning.
They will then call and make our Embassy Appointment for our Congo Coordinator to take our paperwork in. That takes around 8 weeks. So we're looking at late March. :(
Next is Visa processing which takes around 2-3 weeks and then TRAVEL dates in around 2 weeks!!!!! YAY!!!!
Finally, we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel... :)
I thank the Lord for this quick turn around on Immigration approval! It could have been much longer. Praise God! He shows up just when you need Him!
Thank You Jesus!

Waiting... again...

So, on December 29th, our Immigration package was sent in and it arrived at a lockbox facility on December 30th. It was then processed and sent on to the USCIS office in Washington, DC, where it went through processing in again and then arrived on our officers desk around January 9-13th. At this point, our officer, John Michalson, has our case.
Today is the 18th of January, and when I spoke with him today, he stated that the average time for the Immigration approval of a Congo adoption is running around 75 days. OUCH! That is torture! Now, I wonder if that 75 days is from the 30th of Dec. or the 9-13th of January? Not sure.
However, in thinking through this very hard news, I realized that it doesn't matter which date it is from because the fact is that it is our Heavenly Father that will determine the day and the hour that we receive our approval. Not our officer. Not us. No one but the Father.
So, as we look at 75 days, we can rest and even have joy in knowing that those numbers mean nothing. Absolutely Nothing. Our son will come home when our Father says so, and not a moment later. And He doesn't make mistakes. Thank You Lord for Your faithfulness!!!