Finally!

Friday, May 28, 2010: the day I FedEx'ed to Mike in Rwanda all of our adoption paperwork so we could be approved to adopt Christine.
Friday, May 27, 2011: the day we finally got our approval letter from the government allowing us to proceed with our adoption!

Wow!  Almost exactly one year to the day, and now we finally have it.  After praying and believing and dealing with the pain of waiting for one year it is almost hard to believe that we finally have that approval letter in our hands.  I am not completely relieved yet, because there is still at least a week's worth of government "stuff" to take care of here in Kigali (both Rwanda & the US government) and then another week or more of government "stuff" (US only) that has to be done in Nairobi, before everything is finished.

But I will thank God right now that we do finally have this approval- this opens the door that allows us to finally get this done!  No more pain of wondering, "are they going to say yes or no?"  "What will happen if they say no?"  It's interesting because I was thinking today of the story Jesus told about the unjust judge & how because of persistence the widow received justice.  Then I was looking at my blog post from one year ago & this is the verse I had posted there:

Luke 18:1-6
Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: "In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, 'Grant me justice against my adversary.'  "For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming!' " 

Seems so true now!  One year and over 21 visits to their office later, even though they didn't want to (because our adoption of an older child is outside of how things are "normally" done), they approved us.  Like our son Michael reminded us, "When God says YES, no one can say no."

Speaking of Michael (Kumacs) please be praying for him.  He is not going with the rest of the family on June 2nd as we had hoped.  He has a visa interview appointment for June 20th (that was the soonest we could get him in).  We pray for God to go before him & give him favor so that he will be able to join us in the USA for the remainder of the summer.  It would certainly be easier for him to do his online school when I am there with him to help coach him through it, not to mention just being able to be together as a family, as we desire.

Our flight tickets are scheduled for June 2nd, but we are going to have to change that.  It is possible Mike, KaLia & Nate may be able to leave on the 2nd, or we may need to change their tickets a day or so later if we are not able to get the Kigali/US Embassy process done in time.  I pray we don't have to do that ($750 + Nate REALLY wants to go back to the USA).  I will stay with Christine and finish up the process in Kigali & Nairobi.  Hopefully we will be able to be back in the USA about a week or 10 days after the rest of the family. 

It is sad that the rest of the family has to leave without us, and also sad that it is most likely that Christine and I will miss being there for the big TTI event that is planned for Saturday, June 11th, 6pm at the US Digital building in Vancouver, WA.  But we will do what we need to do, and follow this adoption through so it is finished!  Finally!

Thank you for your prayers for us all through this process, and for your continued prayers for the finishing of the process, for our son Michael's visa, and for the TTI event coming up.  Please also pray for wisdom for me as when I change my ticket from the original date of June 2nd I have to pick a date when I think the adoption will be completely finished & that seems to be a bit of a guessing game.  (I don't want to run out of time, but I also don't want to be sitting around waiting to leave!)  I am asking God to give us favor and to go before us to help us all along the rest of this road.

God Bless You,
Lisa