Dear Friends and Family.... Peace from Africa!
We would have come home sooner if we could. Part of the struggle to come home sooner involved getting Tinsae a visa. Normally a visa takes only two days to process by the embassy in Ethiopia. However, even though she is our daughter, her visa was automatically denied because of her HIV condition.
We knew this in advance and we prepared the appropriate waiver document. The difficulty came in getting the waiver processed through the proper channels. Once we submitted the waiver it would have to go to the CDC in Atlanta for review and approval, back to the embassy in Ethiopia, then on to a central processing point in Africa (Nairobi, Kenya) and then back to the Ethiopian embassy.
We had our embassy appointment last Wednesday at about 4pm local time. The people at the CDC were prepped to receive our document on Wednesday morning US Eastern time. But after 10am ET they would be out of the office and would not return until after the Thanksgiving holiday on Monday. We were racing time. When I left the embassy on Wednesday afternoon they said they were going to fax our documents to the CDC immediately to meet the CDC closing deadline of 10am Wednesday morning. I was praying that the documents would be received in time. However, they were not.
The woman at the CDC that handles the HIV waiver process kindly emailed me at 10am stating that she did not receive the documents from the embassy and she would be leaving on holiday. Because I didn't have internet access, I did not receive this information until Thursday evening. I was very disappointed and frustrated. We basically lost 4 days because of the time difference when the CDC returned to the office on Monday morning. Michelle and I planned for this delay but it would really be extremely tight getting the visa issued by our flight that is planned on Friday the 30th.
Are you following all of this? I know this might be too much info for some.
Last Friday was a tough day of waiting....waiting for Monday. I worried about Tinsae's health and I worried about our finances (to be honest, maybe not in that order). What if we didn't get the visa until the week of the Dec 3rd?
This journey has been incredibly introspective. It has been quite a spiritual journey for me. It has been a journey for me in taking steps to trust God...over the last two years. I shared with you in earlier posts and in yesterday's Adoption Journey Story how I had trust-in-God issues. It is incredibly revealing to see how Tinsae's trust issues are very similar to my trust-in-God issues. I'm faith-less but God is always faithful.
If you allow me in subsequent posts, I'd like to share some of those struggles. There are some specific verses of scripture that many regard as great promises of God, but in my mind they offered me little comfort... until God broke me... not with an iron fist but with tender compassion and love.
Last night I reached a point with God that I would be content to stay in Africa as long as He wanted me here. Tinsae's health is in His hands. Our finances are His finances. God is in control. Whatever He chooses to do, I need to be able to praise Him for whatever outcome. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. It is easy to praise the Lord when things turn out the way I want them to, but could I praise Him when they don't turn out my way? Late last night I reached that peace.
Tinsae has a long road ahead of her. Physically, the battle with HIV, is very treatable and promising and she will be receiving medication and all the best care the week we return to Delaware. However, her emotional health, I think will be her greater struggle. We can see how her trust issues and related anger are all bottled up inside of her. Clenched fists are pretty typical body language for her. Today she started to cry a lot over little things. She showed very little emotion over anything prior to this unless she was getting a shot. We thought this was a good sign. She was showing us how she was feeling.
Some of it we think may be related to her grieving. She is letting out that bottled up emotion. For our part, we are there when she closes her eyes and we are there when she opens them. We just need to keep showing her consistent and reliable love that she can come to trust as much as possible. We can't wait until she meets her brothers and sister. They too will be able to show her love she has never seen before.
Well.... today at 5:20 we got a call that Tinsae's visa will be ready at 10am tomorrow (Friday) morning. Great news! Praise the Lord! I wish I would have trusted God sooner...like last week. :)
It looks like we will be catching our flight on time. We leave Friday night, the 30th, at 10pm. We will travel for about 15 hours and arrive on Saturday morning at the Dulles International Airport in Washington D.C. about 7:30am.
Thanks for your prayers!
I would like to share two songs that I listened to over and over this week. I need to hear these songs. These songs were medicine to my soul. If you struggle anything like me in trusting God, I hope and pray these songs will speak to your heart. Listen carefully to the words! They will be a blessing to you.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=8h3QLS8wmxQ
http://youtube.com/watch?v=7Qp11X6LKYY
God Loves Us...more than we can ever begin to imagine.
Love Bill & Michelle.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment