So in all of these weeks since we have been home from court, we have watched and waited every 2 weeks for the announcement of the next travel group to be announced. In the beginning, this was not much of an issue because it's standard for your papers to take 6 weeks or so to be fully collected over there. At the 6 week mark, we didn't expect to get to go, because there were so many people with court ahead of us that were still waiting to travel due to other setbacks in December and Ethiopian Christmas closing things down. Since then...
1) the group of people who DID get to go got stuck at the Embassy to do a last minute paper change that has to do with an additional document proving rightful relinquishment from non-parents such as an aunt or uncle or something. It got resolved, but freaked us all out. Since it all got resolved, we all kinda moved on.
2) They announced right around then that they weren't really going to be going in order according to when people went to court. It would be somewhat close to that, but not really a science like it used to be.
3) They did not go in order and some people that really should have gotten to go didn't, and people behind us did get to go instead.
4) Those poor people that were lucky enough to get to go on the Feb 8th embassy date, were informed TODAY before they were going to leave TOMORROW that they shouldn't go. Heart. Breaking. Yet again, the US embassy invoked some last minute changes that need to be remedied before these peoples cases can be heard.
Lastly, our agency sent out an official notice today ALSO letting us know that the US Embassy has thrown the every other week meetings out the window, and will now summon families on a case by case basis as their stuff is complete. For our sakes, this could be a good thing, since enough time (almost 8 weeks) has passed that our papers should be completely done or near done. The difficult part is that it will be difficult to plan because we have no idea when or if we have been submitted, and we don't know how much notice the embassy will give us before we have to appear. For those of you who have been around for awhile, kinda sounds like waiting for Lucas yes? Go nearly insane, and then, surprise!!! You have a baby you can actually go get.
We will see what happens in the weeks to come, we really have no idea :-)
In the meantime, pray for God's intercession for those families waiting to get their children. Thank God for giving me "peace that surpasses all understanding" because I am much more calm right now than I thought I would be. Pray for endurance for me and for the other families in the process with me. Pray for Ben's continued health. Pray for the wisdom of our staff and also those investigating visa's at the embassy.
To close, a little idea for you to chew on. In Bible study this week, one of my amazing girls (also an international adoptive mama)described the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the Fiery furnace. They came out WITHOUT smelling like smoke after such a crazy and emotional trial.
That is my prayer... that I will come out of this experience with a little boy, loving my God more, and as a more mature woman than when I entered. I don't want to smell like the smoke of the fire I was in. I wanna smell like roses baby.
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