Yes, that is the name of this game. Waiting. Jim and I pray every day that God would keep His hand on our paperwork and that it would be processed without delay, wherever it is at that moment. We know that we have a very real enemy who hates that we are giving Caylie a family and hope, and who would thwart our every effort in this process. But we know that God is GOD and he will bring to pass what He has called us to. Even though the wait is long and difficult, we know that we must trust in His timing for every step. We will travel to bring our daughter home exactly when He wants that to happen; not a day earlier or a day later.
In the mean time, we pray for our little one, that our loving Father would be preparing her heart to leave all that she knows and that when the day comes for us to become a family, she would be ready to accept the love that we so want to give her. We pray for Him to be working in her spirit, preparing her for the day that she will hear about Jesus. We pray for our own hearts, that God would fill them to the brim with an uncommon love for our sweet girl, even before we've met her. We pray that God would use these weeks and months of waiting to prepare our family and our marriage for the changes we are about to encounter. We pray for Caylie's foster family, that they would have the opportunity to hear the gospel. I don't think we were given pictures of her foster mother by chance. Our Father wanted us to know that she exists; to see her face, and to pray for her, even though we may never know her name.
As for the process . . . we are still waiting for approval from USCIS. We got our finger-print appointments last week, which were for December 20. We decided to try walking in, instead of waiting for three more weeks, but having read stories about this on adoption websites, I was very nervous about it! It seems that in some field offices around the country, walk-ins are welcomed, but at others, walk-ins get a rather severe chewing out! I did not want to come across as an irritation to these people or as people who thought they didn't have to follow the rules. I wanted us to reflect Jesus from the time we walked in to the time we walked out. We prayed that God would prepare the hearts of the workers there for our arrival before it even happened. We prayed that He would give us favor with them and that they would allow us to finger print early, even if they didn't know why. We prayed that we would be a blessing to them and honor our Jesus through every step of the visit.
After we had prayed, I was still very nervous, although I shouldn't have been. I should have trusted our God to do this, because He did it!! I expected to have to explain ourselves to a grumpy security guard at the door, as a friend had had to do the previous week. There wasn't even a security guard there! I expected to have to speak to a supervisor to explain our reasons for going early. Nope, not at all! We walked in, asked if we could wait in line, even though it wasn't out day. Yes, we could, we were told. We waited in a long line, filled out the form, waited about 10 more minutes, dealt with friendly, helpful people, smiled a lot, talked about our adoption, talked to the workers about their job and their day, smiled some more, and that was that! God was SO FAITHFUL to us! I was so amazed. Thank you to all who knew about this and prayed with us!
We are now waiting to be assigned an officer at USCIS who will review our prints and application. Please pray that this would happen without delay. After we get approval, all of our documents must be authenticated at the US consulate, and then FINALLY our dossier will be sent to China! I have been really praying that this would all happen in December, but right now that seems impossible, considering how long the last couple of steps have taken. However, as the title of this blog says, God > Impossible! If He wants our dossier in China this month, that's where it will be. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment