adoption update

"sometimes i would like to ask God why he allows poverty, suffering, and injustice when he could do something about it."
"well, why don't you ask him?"
"because i am afraid he would ask me the same question." -- anonymous

well, we are currently waiting for money from a sell of stock to hit our bank account so we can FINALLY send our USCIS fee and I-600A. jamie bought some stock a few months ago when the market started going up, and though it'd be nice to continue to allow the investment to make money, the money is better used now to pay this fee. remember, USCIS stands for united states citizenship and immigration services. the I-600A is also known as the "application for advance processing of orphan petition." i don't exactly know how to explain what it does, but i do know that it speeds up the government-end of our process. we will (hopefully) receive an appointment in the next few weeks to be fingerprinted at the CIS office in charlotte, where we will also have our last meeting with our social worker.

we are still aiming to send our dossier to ethiopia in january. once our fingerprints are done, USCIS has to process all our paperwork (including our homestudy, i think) and officially approve us to adopt. that can take up to 4 months. A LOT of timing issues and A LOT of money will have to come together in order for us to make it by january, and if we don't make it by then, we will have to be content with whatever happens. i'm not sure if i have mentioned on here that the ethiopian courts close about this time every year due to rainy season. if you get a referral right before courts close, it's likely you'll be waiting until the courts re-open to get a court date, pass court, and travel. though we wish the timing would work out to have our kids home by this time next year, we try to be real about the fact that it's very likely our kids won't be home until next christmas. in some ways, that's good a thing because we'll have more time to prepare and pay off student debt. but it's very hard, because we want our children now.

honestly, i sometimes struggle with jealousy when i see other families who have zipped through the adoption process because they already had money set aside for their adoption. i read these blogs where families decided to adopt months after we did and have already sent their USCIS fee and had their fingerprints done. we've had to wait to be able to write every single check we've written so far. and sometimes it's hard not to see families who have fundraised their entire adoption (literally raised $25,000) and wonder why God has not blessed us in the same way. the truth is, we have been abundantly blessed in many ways. rather than focusing on whose done what or how much money some people have been able to raise, i need to rejoice that because of God's graciousness to so many families (including us), children are being rescued out of poverty, disease, and death.