In other big news we are finally able to leave the country and return home for a brief visit to the States!
And we leave in FOUR days!! GLORY!!
Thanks to Steven's finalized adoption we were able to schedule his visa appointment for Wednesday of this week, and his Burkinabé passport should be stamped with a non-immigrant visa by Friday morning before we leave that night.
It's cutting it close, but that's how we roll!
We actually bought tickets over a month ago to leave on the 15th of this month, praying and believing in faith that God would move mountains to get this show on the road and wrap up his adoption in time for us to return to the States for Christmas.
We've been sitting on pins and needles since October, praying that everything would work out for us to go. We passed court in October (on the very first time! That rarely happens!) Passing court, very simply put, gave us the last official green light by the Burkina government to be able to adopt Steven. They reviewed all of our paperwork from the beginning and gave us their official stamp of approval to complete this process. From the time you pass court we were told it would take ~ one to two months to finalize the adoption. The first thirty days following court is a time when any family members can come forward and contest the adoption. And if no one comes forward (which they didn't), they can proceed with the remaining paperwork, which is big things like his new birth certificate and passport.
Well, shortly after we passed court the revolution happened and the government was dissolved so we were wondering just how exactly this was going to affect our end process.
I knew God had this, I just wondered how this was going to play out and how close He was going to cut it! Sometimes God likes to take His time and pull out a miracle at the very last minute!
Thankfully the Lord placed incredibly people in our life here like Ruth, and our lawyer Bado, and our social worker Adiara who were such big big big advocates for our case and pressured the powers at be to really push our paperwork through.
We ran into some delays, and of course, some more last minute drama...like Social Action losing our paperwork. Like, really really mega important paperwork from Steven's dossier. They lost it (lost papers that they themselves generated) and then never informed us, and without that paperwork they were not able to release the papers needed for our lawyer to create some more papers in order to have a passport made which we need in order to get a visa, which we need in order to leave the country.
This thing....it's quite the process! And the headache!
Thankfully, Adiara uncovered their blunder (more like got them to admit to it), informed Ruth who thankfully had a copy of this paperwork that Social Action lost, things started moving again, and voila, in less than three days time we were done. Ruth told us on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving that it would be over a week (in perfect timing) for them to finish everything. But, again, by God's divine hand He managed to motivate them to accomplish it in three. After this process moving along at a snails pace, to have these papers completed in three days time is a huge achievement for Burkina!
Then we found out on Thursday of last week that Brussel's airline is going on strike on the 15th...the day we were set to leave the country, but thankfully we were rebooked for an earlier flight on Friday the 12th.
And with our visa interview set for Wednesday of this week, Thursday is a national holiday so everything is closed, we were told that we would receive his visa on Friday.
Praying that everything goes well and that there is not a single reason under the sun that they can't issue Steve his visa in time for us to leave that night. It's gonna be close!
During all of this, the last two months, we've kept our impending trip to the States a secret from the girls. We didn't want to tell them that we bought tickets, just for something to happen (and of course things happened) that could derail our trip. We wanted to wait and make it a really special surprise once everything was completed and we were on track to actually be able to leave. So we had plans to surprise them with an early Christmas on the Sunday before we left, so that we could tell them we were leaving for the U.S. the next day. But, with the airline striking and our leave date being pushed up, we decided to surprise them with an early Christmas this past Saturday.
And now, since the big reveal, all we can talk about is our trip! It's been 14 months since we've left Burkina's rich red soil and we are ready for a little break.
The girls are giddy with enthusiasm to go back and see family and enjoy the extra goodness that is Happy Meals, Red Robin, strawberries and, lets face it, most of our talk is about the food that awaits us! Oh my gosh, we can't wait to eat our favorite foods again. It's gonna be good.
So, we're down to four days until we leave.
We have a ton of stuff to finish before we go- but God willing it will all get done. Most importantly Steve's visa!
SO EXCITED!!!!!!!
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