Miracles and Answered Prayers

We have some wonderful news to celebrate today and wanted to share our joy and excitement with all of you!

The first news is that God gave us a miracle in our adoption process today!!  We received an email this morning letting us know that Naika's file was approved and released from MOI in a miraculous 13 days!!!  This is faster than any files have gotten through MOI in the last several months and was exactly what we had asked all of you to pray for so that we can hopefully celebrate Naika's 3rd birthday with her.  The orphanage will now be submitting Naika's file for her printed passport.

The only thing tempering our joy today is that Chelley's file has not yet been approved or released from MOI.  Here is the message we received from our orphanage regarding the situation...

"MOI did some random signing and released several files, in no particular order that had only been in for just over a week.  One of those was Naïka's file.  Unfortunately, Chelley's was not signed, but we are hoping that they will keep signing and hers will be released soon also.  

In the meantime, we will go ahead and submit Naïka's file to Immigration for her passport to be printed.  I will be sure to let you know once we receive her passport, as well as once Chelley's file comes out of MOI."

If you would please pray with us that Chelley's file would be released soon, we would appreciate that greatly.  We know that God knows every detail of this situation and we trust His hand and His timing in this process.  He has been faithful through every step and we know that He will continue to work on behalf of our girls to bring them home soon.  We are still in shock with the miracle he accomplished with Naika's paperwork and are praying that Chelley's will follow soon!!

Also, another way that God has clearly answered our prayers in the last week is that the U.S. government shutdown will not greatly impact the VISA process.  Here is what has been reported regarding the VISA processing in this shutdown...

The State Department would continue processing foreign applications for visas and U.S. applications for passports, since fees are collected to finance those services. Embassies and consulates overseas would continue to provide services to American citizens.

 So, there may still be some delays in the VISA process due to more limited staffing or other factors, but at least the VISA process itself will continue.  This is great news for the many families that were just submitted to the US VISA process this week and for those of us who will be there very, very soon!!  As soon as both Naika and Chelley have printed passports, we'll be ready to make it through the very last stage of the VISA process and finally bring these girls home.

 Our hearts are so filled with joy today as we watch God's hand at work in moving us yet another step closer to the end of this long and winding journey.  Please join us in prayer for Chelley to get OUT of MOI soon and join us in praising and thanking God for all that He has done in just the last week to hear and answer our prayers!!  Thank you!