Joy and Perseverance

Hi, everyone,

I wanted to upload a fun Christmas picture of Ava for you to see! I'll upload more as the week/weekend goes on.

I'm afraid that I have been absent from posting since earlier this week as we've had a bit of turmoil at our house. Everything is somewhat calming down now, or maybe it's me that's calming down. If you're around me long, you know that I'm a passionate and emotional person and it takes me some time to settle. Ben would definitely agree with me here. Good thing he's not posting! :) It's just the way I am. My emotions have been strong, to say the least, this week. Here's an update...

We've had another major setback with our China adoption, details that are very complex involving red-tape and beaurocracy. Day by day, I'm ironing out the details of what we need to do, and Ben and I are in the process of writing an appeal letter to USCIS this weekend because they rejected our I-600A (the US approval to bring Maia home).

Their reasoning is because we were issued a non-valid US official approval in July of 2007 that said "amended July 26, 2007." I was told this week that this was in error and that it was based only on our renewal of our fingerprinting in Nashville. This was an oversight on their part, not ours, as we've been so very diligent and have been careful to turn over any rocks for hidden problems throughout this entire process.

Even though it was a mistake on their part, they are claiming that we now have to file and I-800A which means we have to redo our medicals, background checks, financial reports, home study, letters of employment, and complete 10 hours of Pre-Hague training. Hague is what regulates intercountry adoptions right now. China is a member of the Hague convention.

As you can imagine, after 2 years and 7 months of filing paperwork and paying fee after fee for this and that, Ben and I were shellshocked to learn of this this week.

Please pray for the Lord to go before us and for Him to make the crooked places straight and the rough places smooth. Everything in my human eye right now looks like a tangled mess, and again, we are up against a huge obstacle to bring her home.

I trust; I do. It's just so scary for me as I navigate through all of this potential paperwork again.

Before this started this week, we were 1 document away after Ava's adoption from being completely finished. That document arrived on Friday of this week.

I'll keep everyone updated as this progresses. We should hear something back from USCIS maybe the latter part of this coming week.

I'll upload some fun Christmas pics of Ava soon. We put up our Christmas tree last night! :) I don't want this to rob us of our joy with spending our first Christmas with Ava!

Hanging in there,

Emily