It's been 17 days since I last updated the blog and A LOT has happened in those 17 days! They've possibly been the best 17 days of our adoption process thus far...full of great news and forward progress!!
For those of you not on facebook, I'm sorry for leaving you out of the loop for these last couple of weeks. Let me back up and fill you in on the rejoicing and excitement that you've missed!
As of the last post on Oct. 1st, Naika had been approved and released from MOI (passport approval) in an AMAZING 13 days! This was truly such a miracle and we were so happy to hear that great news. Our happiness was tempered just a little bit by the fact that, for some reason, Chelley's file had not been released. They had gone through every other step of this process together, so it seemed strange that they hadn't been released from MOI together.
While we trusted that God had this part of the process under control as well, we knew that there was the potential for one sibling's file to be released while the other sibling's file remained in MOI for several more weeks...or even months!! I'd witnessed other families adopting from our orphanage going through that kind of waiting for the last few months and we were really hoping and praying that there was no problem with Chelley's file that had kept it from being approved.
That waiting was yet another test of faith and submission. Of choosing to praise God even if our process was delayed by weeks or months. In hindsight, it seems easy now, but those 48 hours felt long and difficult in the midst of them. Then, on the afternoon of Thursday, Oct. 3rd, we received word that Chelley's file had also been approved and released from MOI and would be forwarded on to passport printing (still on the Haitian side of the process). The relief and joy were indescribable and overwhelming.
Now, we just needed to wait for their passports to be printed, and then the Haitian side of the process would FINALLY be complete. Our other prayer request at that point was that their passports would be printed correctly. Passports with errors can cause another potential month of delay so we prayed that our girls' passports would have NO errors! Since Naika had moved into passport printing before Chelley, we received word that her passport had been printed correctly as of last Friday, Oct. 11th. One down...one to go.
We figured we'd hear about Chelley's passport on Monday of this week, since she was only a couple of days behind. No news on Monday, no news on Tuesday or Wednesday, and we knew we couldn't receive news on Thursday because all Haitian offices were closed for a Haitian holiday. So, we were really ready to hear good news today! And we were not disappointed!! At about noon today, we received the email that Chelley's passport had been printed correctly as well. PRAISE GOD!!!
That means that we are FINALLY AND COMPLETELY DONE with the Haitian side of our adoption process!!! That is an AMAZING feeling after the waiting of the last 15 months!! Early next week, we should hear that all of our paperwork has been filed with the USCIS for the US Visa part of the process. This is the LAST stage of our process and then we will actually be bringing these sweet girls HOME! Can you tell we're excited?!? We expect this Visa stage to possibly take another 6 weeks or so before we can travel to get the girls and we won't know our travel dates for sure until 6 or 7 days before we get on a plane. I'll try to post again early next week to explain in a bit more detail what this Visa process entails. But for now, we rejoice that we can see the light at the end of this tunnel and that our WHOLE family will be together in one place very soon.
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