Prayers, Prints, and Planes

Can I just say that GOD totally rocks?!? Your adoption peeps will understand what a MIRACLE we encountered this week with our USCIS fingerprinting. Here's a little backstory for those of you not familiar with what USCIS fingerprinting is:

In order to adopt a child from a foreign country, you have to fill out a petition with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to classify an orphan as a member of your family, which in our case is called an I-600A form. A part of the process of getting approved is doing biometric fingerprints, or FBI prints. These prints are only good for 18 months, then they delete them, and your USCIS approval is expired.

So, we got our USCIS approval back in November of 2009, when we were in the beginning stages of the adoption process. Never in a million years did I think they would expire before our adoption was finalized! But alas, they expire February 27th, so it was necessary for us to have them re-done. We have known this was the case, but our adoption agency kept telling us to hold off on having them re-done because they kept thinking we would get a court date before they expired. Well, you all know that story if you've been keeping up with our adoption. If you're new to this blog go back to August 2010 and start reading there to catch up.

We held off until we KNEW there was NO WAY we were getting a court date before they expired, sent off our request, and got our fingerprinting date...February 7. However, due to who-knows-what, we were told that the USCIS was backed up on printing and it could take up to three months to get our prints back from the date they were taken. Since our court date is March 17th, we couldn't wait three months. Our agency advised us to start PRAYING and call our Senators and State Representatives to ask for help getting the prints expedited.

We called both Richard Shelby's and Jeff Sessions' offices. Both were very helpful, but I have to say, Richard Shelby's office was incredibly responsive. We called them before we got printed and they told us exactly what they needed to help. So as soon as our prints were taken on Monday, we emailed them and let them know the prints were done. We were told it would take at least 48 hours just for the prints to get into the system so we didn't expect to hear anything back from them for a couple of days. Imagine our shock when LESS THAN 24 HOURS LATER...ON TUESDAY MORNING, THE 8TH, RICHARD SHELBY'S OFFICE CALLED GREG AND TOLD HIM THEY JUST GOTTEN OFF THE PHONE WITH USCIS, THE PRINTS WERE DONE AND OUR USCIS APPROVAL WAS IN THE MAIL!!! I have to give huge props to Shelby's office for their kindness and responsiveness, but we all know all the glory goes to God for making this happen. It was like God was just saying, "See? I got this. Don't worry and don't be afraid."

Just another MIRACLE in Kirill's story. God works so powerfully through the least of these and I'm so humbled to get to be his mommy.

One last thing...we've been working on our plane tickets this week. Can I just say how exciting it's been to book two round-trip tickets and one one-way ticket? When we got the itinerary with "Gregory Kirill Davis" printed in black and white, I almost broke down. It makes it so real. One month from today we will leave to go get him...I CANNOT WAIT!

So What's Next?

Now that we have our court date (ah...I still can't believe I'm typing that...SO THRILLED! THANK YOU GOD!), what happens next? Well, the first thing we have to do is KEEP PRAYING. We still have a lot of steps to bring K home for good, so keep your prayers going strong. They are powerful and effective! Pray that God continues to be glorified through our adoption and K's life. We KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt that he has already been such a testament to God's name.

We will travel to K's country, to the capital city, and have medicals done there with 8 medical specialists. Once we are done with that, we will travel to K's region for our court date. Once we get there, the first day, we will complete final court paperwork and visit with K!!!  MY HEART IS ABOUT TO EXPLODE JUST TYPING THAT...WE WILL SEE HIM IN A LITTLE OVER A MONTH!!! :) :) :) The next day, we have court. If we are approved, that will begin a 10-day grace period. That time is designed to give anyone a chance to object to the adoption. During that time, we will come back home. We could stay, but we will be missing Clayton so much and we feel that we need to come home to see him. Plus, those 10 days would be pretty difficult. There isn't a lot to do in K's region; it's a beautiful city but it would be hard to fill 10 days there. We wouldn't necessarily be able to visit him everyday if we did stay because of travel to and from the orphanage. It takes a couple of hours to drive there from the city and we would have to hire a driver each day, which would be very expensive. So for all of those reasons, we will come home.

We will return to K's country after the 10 day grace period and the first thing we will do is go to his region and pick him up! He will be ours at that point. :) :) :) We have to complete some post-adoption paperwork there, then we will go back to the capital city. In the capital, K will have a medical exam done. Then we will have to register K with the consulate and get his passport and visa. Once we get all of that done, we will come HOME!  :) I'm not posting exact dates on here for privacy's sake, but we will be home sometime the first week in April.

Thank you all so much for your continued prayers. Our family is completely overwhelmed with the outpouring of love and support we have received. I'm terribly behind on responding to all the Facebook messages, emails, texts, and phone calls. Please know that it's only because there aren't enough hours in the day to respond immediately but I will do my best to respond eventually. We need these words of encouragement so much. YOU have been Jesus on earth to us and for that we are humbled and so, so grateful. God is so good. His plan in all of this is unfolding. I can't share all the details yet, but we are finding out things that are blowing us away. God has been working very hard behind the scenes in ways that we could have never imagined. I can't wait to tell you more!

MARCH 17TH

That's all we know. But we have a court date and it's March 17th!!! PRAISE GOD! HE IS FAITHFUL...MOUNTAINS MOVED!

Last Paper?

I've said this about ten times before in this process, but I THINK I just Fed-Ex'd the last piece of adoption paperwork. Now as I'm typing that, I'm thinking..."you're going to jinx it!" But I refuse to let that thought take over. The judge requested some additional information and all of our court documents had expired, so that was all in this set of papers. Please say a prayer for that envelope. I know Satan is trying to keep it from reaching its final destination. Another adoptive family that is adopting from the same country and region as we are said, "We're getting closer because things are getting harder." She is so right. If you don't believe in spiritual warfare, adopt. So please be in prayer for Satan to be restrained and our paperwork to arrive in country, safe and sound.