It was, in some ways, a disappointing day. We had hoped that the conclusion letter from the region where the boys reside would be ready on Friday, but it was not signed Friday. We assumed that it would be signed this morning early and sent to the the SDA before lunch. We were wrong. In addition, the SDA was supposed to have sent a letter to girl 'k's orphanage so they could locally cancel the guardianship. This didn't happen until 2:30 pm today by fax, and this was about the same time that our conclusion letter was finally completed out in the boys region. Unfortunately, the local council in the girl's region was not able to get the document today, and we were told that they may not be able to act on this document until the 19th of February. That is not good.
So, as we transported ladies from the boys region office to get additional signatures, we made phone calls to the girl's orphanage to see if they could put some additional urgency on the council to act and cancel the guardianship. The ultimate goal of all this is for the SDA to issue a permission to ask for a court date. Hopefully in the morning there will be a resolution about the girl's guardianship and we will be able to request court. Please pray with us, as we have been doing all day, that this paperwork logjam will clear tomorrow which would possibly give us a court date late in this week.
We have officially been gone from the concrete in Birmingham airport going on the 4th week now. It may not seem long to you, but in complete transparency, we are feeling the duration full force. As you can imagine, our waiting game and paperwork cat and mouse chase have not allowed us to spend any time with our new children today, and the problem with distance between the 2 orphanages shuts down any spur of the moment decisions to make a visit. This has been the most challenging paperwork chase of our 3 adoption adventures. We are thankful for Yuriy our facilitator, and for his warm car and rally driving skills. Doing this by metro or by taxi at this point would be very difficult.
We were very encouraged yesterday to be able to see and speak with our M17 community via skype, even if we were very uncertain right until the call came through that we would have internet access or not. It was Vickie's 3rd asking for a Wifi card that did the trick. We are less anxious about the process than we are from being away from our children, but we are "letting our request be made known to God". Thank you for joining in this with us.
1 comment:
Hey Aunt Vickie, Uncle Chris, and Kole,
I am so glad that Kelsey told me about this website; actually, I didn't even know that you all were down there. I never really get to tell you in person (Uncle Chris and Aunt Vickie) how much I admire the leadership you show in raising a family, and how you put God first in everything and let Him lead the way through life. You two, along with the whole family, are a light in the dark parts of the Pickens family, with the divorces and all. I am at the point in my life where I am forming a vision and goals of who I want to become and what type of man and father I will be in the future; and your marriage and walk with the Lord is the epitome of who I want to be, so thank you.
I will be praying for you all in the coming weeks, and I am confident that God's plan is perfect. I can't wait to meet the new members of the family. God Bless.
Taylor Pickens
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