Waiting for Wednesdays is really hard. Many families "waiting for Wednesday" have been known to check their email at 2, 3, 4 AM - when it is mid-day in Ethiopia - looking for the email from the Embassy.
The next Wednesday, May 16th, rolled around and our agency didn't get her passport. Tick. Tick. Tick. The next Wednesady came and was got THE EMAIL...
It said that they weren't going to submit the baby's visa application again. Although all the passport had come, something with another document didn't look right and they wanted to get it corrected. They did not have much information for us at all - there wasn't even clarity on which document was problematic. At first I was livid - they had had this paperwork for months and were questioning it now? How long would it take to fix the problem? Why didn't they do this before? No one had mentioned any problematic paperwork before. Why now? Why the day we were supposed to be submitted to Embassy? Why this Wednesday?
But then as Ryan and I talked about, we got deeply worried. Could this problem jeopardize the adoption? Was the problem more than just a type-o? Were there problems with her case that would make her ineligible for adoption (even typing those words is excruiating)? Could this be the beginning of the unravelling of the whole thing? We had no answers at first and so little information that the "worst case scenario" was haunting us. Here we are so close to finally bringing her home and something is coming up?
The night we found out that we weren't submitted to Embassy and the paperwork wasn't okay, I broke down. All I could think about was how close we were. It was the day we were supposed to be sighing in relief that everything was complete and the Visa was coming. Instead, I was consumed with fear and crying out to the Lord to help us.
The hardest days were the first two when we didn't have a lot of information. We spent hours on the phone with our agency getting more answers, other agencies asking for their professional experience with this, etc. Our agency had to talk with the staff in Ethiopia to find out exactly what their concern was. Communicating across time zones isn't quick. Ryan was relentless in getting his mind around what was going on. I, meanwhile, spent many hours crying, praying and reading the word for encouragement. It was an emotionally exhausting week.
After we felt like we had gotten as much information as we could (our agnecy assured us that it is a clerical error and that they have been trying to get it changed by the Ethiopian Regional MOWA staff for weeks), we had to make a decision - either wait for the agency staff in Ethiopia to try to fix the document or submit Sitota's visa application to the Embassy with all the paperwork left "as is". And in the end, we decided to do just that. For us, we felt much more comfortable with the US Embassy looking in to the document error and seeking it's correction, than with the documents being changed by someone else.
So, the good news is that we have been submitted (6 weeks after our court approval)!! How long it will take is unknown. One agency we spoke with has had all but one of their cases where there are no birth parents sent to a higher authority (USCIS in Nairobi) to be processed. Our agency has told us that their abandonment cases have been clearing Embassy faster. So, once again, the Lord is Author of our lives and we are on the edge of our seats to find out how He has written the end of this chapter.
We are hoping and praying that our baby goes through quickly, of course.
We won't stop fighting for Sitota! Our love for her just keeps growing deeper.
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