adoption travel dates, maybe

We got our hard copy of the approval in the mail last Friday, just before we loaded 50 of us into vans for the yearly Welcome Weekend retreat for middle school students.  A couple of days ago we learned that our travel dates are tentatively scheduled for the last week of Nov thru the first week of Dec.

That’s further out than we had hoped, but it is what it is.

The only catch is that we’re still waiting on a clearance for Kim from the great state of GA.  Kim and I had to submit paperwork for child abuse clearances for every state we lived in.  Kim and I met at Toccoa Falls College (GA), so we included GA in our requests.  My paperwork came back in 5 weeks (why does it take so long?), but Kim’s was returned blank.  It turns out that her form didn’t include her maiden name, even though her social security number and all the other details were there. At this point, you may typically think of replacing your Social Security Card. The lady in charge could have made a phone call to clear it up, but she chose to return the paperwork blank.  Our agency is handling all this, and they’ll have to resubmit the forms, which likely means more weeks of waiting.

Our adoption agency says that they’ve never encountered a problem like this.  Most of the govt agencies are quite happy to help families through the adoption process.

Would you please pray for Debbie in GA, who has the authority to speed this process up?  I don’t know why she isn’t being cooperative; maybe she’s having a rough go of it.  Pray that God blesses her, that she releases Kim’s clearance, and that we don’t hit any more snags.

Also, pray for our friends Chris and Collette, and their daughter Asia.  They are in the Philippines right now meeting their newly adopted son, Rex!  How cool is that?