The Power of Prayer Part 3

One Step Closer!

We have been praying and praying for our paperwork to keep moving. We had to submit an application to CIS (Citizenship and Immigration Services) with Homeland Security at the end of September. This process can take 60-90 days!!  We prayed and prayed and we got our appointment notice quickly to go for fingerprinting in Philly but not until Oct 22^nd.  I was heart broken. If you are an adoptive mama you know the one thing you don’t want to do is sit on paperwork for a moment longer than necessary and this was 4 weeks away! The crazy mama in me started coming out and I had heard that you can walk in. So I began planning an impromptu trip and emailed around to find out if this was possible. Well I quickly found out that it was not permitted at our location and I was crushed! How could I sit and wait for a month. That morning I talked with a dear sister in Christ who has adopted and she prayed over me and soothed my broken heart that day. There is such power in prayer. I had such a peace and can’t wait to see how God is going to use those 4 weeks for His perfect timing.

Peter and I went on October 22^nd. Our appointment was at 9 am in Philly. The GPS took us a crazy way and was eating up all our extra time we had budgeted. Three miles away we saw a sign for road closed ahead and the construction was starting yesterday!! I kept driving and praying! I had no idea where we were. Another sign road closed 500 feet ahead. It is now 8:50. I kept driving and praying and there over in the left side of the road in the trees was a Road Closed Sign. I’m telling you God blew that sign out of the way and we kept driving and made it there at 8:58! God is amazing. We then entered the empty lobby (I still wonder if we could have did a walked in). We were taken promptly and completed our fingerprints. Peter always has trouble printing and the woman said we may have to come back again if they don’t go through. What would they do differently I don’t know but we started praying.

We were told it would be at least 30 days until the approval would come. 17 days later we got the approval!!! We are onto the next step. We quickly scanned the approval to our agency and she quickly sent off our papers to be authenticated. Originally I was going to do the authentication where I would take our papers to Harrisburg and then to New York City to the Chinese Consulate but our terrific agency has the ability in their state to do all the authentications there. We chose to have them do it and the other night I was laying in bed thanking the Lord. Right now after Sandy I would be trying to get to New York City to do our paper work. God knew and provided another way. He is so amazing! We just got an email today that our papers are at the Consulate in Houston and it will be about 1 week. Then our papers will be ready to travel to CHINA!!!!! This is huge. We then have an approximate time of 6 months until travel!!!!  We are on our knees praying as so much more has to come together in the next 5 months.  Thank you to all who have been praying for us your prayers mean such a great deal because the Power of Prayer is Incredible!