Lost Papers and Lost Certificates

A girl and her Papa....

I laugh when I see this picture!

Playing on the iPad was so exciting that her little fingers just pushed and pushed and pushed every single button over and over and as fast as she could. Papa had to teach her to push it one time. One time. It took a while, but she soon learned.

If you are praying alongside us for Mary just keep right on praying!!  We still don't have plane tickets and our court is scheduled for Thursday.

It seems hopeless.

But on Friday God moved part of the mountain.

One of the many issues is that an important paper we needed for court was lost by one of the governmental agencies over there. Ours weren't the only ones lost so several families have been biting nails over here and waiting and waiting and waiting. On Friday morning, our spitfire of a facilitator and two other facilitators stormed into an office on our behalf looking for those lost papers.

I was sent a message that morning to pray and so pray we did. We asked some of our fellow prayer warriors to pray and pray they did.

Those women pushed on the mountain and it moved.

Those papers are now where they are supposed to be.

It's not over.

We need the mountain to topple into the sea on Monday.

The chances of that happening are slim.

But God moved part of the mountain on Friday and we KNOW He can bring it to dust in one breath.

So we are praying hard and asking you to please pray hard.

We want to be frantically calling for plane tickets on Monday afternoon!  We want to see our little one this next week. We want to get through court so we can come home and count the hours until we can go back and get her. Our hearts are longing with every breath for this to happen this week.

Either way we know that in the end - when the dust has settled - we will see God's handiwork in all the mess. And in that we take comfort.

We pray. We wait. We long. We trust.

On Friday, while the mountain was being shifted, we learned some rather horrifying news on a different front....

On the U.S. side of the adoption, as part of the U.S. requirements for immigration, your homestudy has to be certified by a Hague agency.

We paid a lot of money for our Hague certification.

We were certified and qualified by immigration to adopt. We hold that approval in our hands.

The agency we hired... and the agency that about 30-40 other families who are part of our Reece's Rainbow family hired  - lost their certification as a Hague agency.

This doesn't affect our ability to have court for Mary but it does affect our ability to get her out of the country.

Our homestudy needs to be certified in order for us to get through immigration.

Since our agency lost their certification... we lost our certification.

Unless there is a way for us to be grandfathered in (and that is very doubtful) - we have to hire another agency to certify us.

It's several thousand dollars worth of headache plus a lot of paperwork that just makes me want to cry.

But our iPad loving girlie is worth it.

So we are working hard at trying to figure out what we need to do to redo our certification.

And we are again asking for prayers for not only us but the other families who are in the same situation. Many of the families are not even close to being funded and adding this new cost on is just about drowning them.  It was hard news on Friday. A lot of tears and a lot of discussions. Pray for wisdom and clarity as we all move forward with this news!!

THANK YOU!!