Black Hole Vomits Paperwork

Thought that one would catch your attention!!

This morning headed to my Wednesday shift at the Pregnancy Care Center, I made my usual Starbucks pit-stop. As I was leaving, coffee in hand, I crossed paths with blonde-haired mom and her beautiful Chinese daughter, happily perched on her hip. Not allowing one moment for sadness to sink in, I prayed, "Lord, I know you didn't let me cross their paths accidentally...and since you are a merciful and loving God, I'm going to assume you allowed us to cross paths so that I would be encouraged."

God honored that prayer.

Vince beat me home this afternoon, and as I entered the kitchen, he called out from the living room. He said he had something I needed to see....(could it be?).....I tried not to get excited, but instead strolled over to the couch, where he handed me an envelope from USCIS!

Finally, our immigration approval has arrived!!

God Hasn't Forgotten Us

Encouragement when needed. No sooner, no later. God is faithful...even when discouragement sets in and faith waivers, He always graciously reminds us to keep our eyes on the prize.

And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. Acts 2:44-45

Almost two Sundays ago, a young couple and dear friends, approached Vince and I after worship and placed an envelope in Vince's hand. Though I was near-by, I only caught the end of the conversation. They mentioned selling something and wanting to share their profit for our adoption. Wow! I felt the tears well up...because, I must admit, I was beginning to feel forgotten; until that moment.

Things had been so frustrating because we're still waiting for immigration and we also had three documents returned because they were notarized incorrectly. We're so ready to get our paper work to China so we can relax...we really expected it would be there by now. God knew our hearts were breaking...he intervened and renewed our hope!

What a blessing this couple has been! They shared with us a significant amount of money that I'm sure they could have used for a million other necessities, but instead, they saw our need as priority. Wow, again. It's so amazing to see God's people in action: exercising enormous faith, and sharing sacrificially!

There's a passage in the Old Testament where King David declares that he will not give to God what costs him nothing. I have now seen what that looks like.

No News Isn't Always Good News

Still no immigration approval...tomorrow will be 8 weeks.

But let me tell ya about last week's fiasco...
Our family coordinator is off duty for 3 weeks for her wedding & honeymoon, so we've been assigned a temp coordinator for the mean time. Except for immigration, all of our paper work has been ready to submit to AWAA for several weeks.

Before our FC took off, she suggested we go ahead and send AWAA our paperwork for initial processing. And we did, but...I sent everything to the wrong person AND forgot to make copies of our original documents. That's a pretty big deal since I've been working on papers for 6 months, and if Fed-Ex were to lose them...oh, I can't even stand to think about that!

Anyway, our Fed-Ex made it to AWAA, and was located by the appropriate FC...thank goodness! But one problem was discovered, my OH birth certificate was county certified with the wrong date (06, instead of 07). Everything is time-sensitive! After several phone calls to OH (state and county) it has become evident they will not be able to help me in this lifetime, so I have to pay an agency to handle it for me, quickly. It's really not a big deal, it just stinks to pay for someone else's mistake...wow, suppose that's every-day life!