We truly are a family redefined. We are husband, wife, son, daughter, step children, biological and adopted children and most importantly, Children of God.

A friend pointed out that I needed to update my blog header. After our adoption from Ethiopia, I had updated it stating how the adoption of Sara Joy completed our family. Well... the journey continues. After much prayer, we have decided to follow what we feel is God's calling for us...we went to Ghana with the intention of adopting a four year old girl, Isabella Hope. Little did we know that she would be the catalyst to bringing home not only her, but her half brother and sister. We will now be adding not only Isabella Hope to our family, but also Mary Grace (9) and Gilbert (6) who we will transition to the name Nathaniel Timothy. The shock is wearing off and the JOY and EXCITEMENT are overwhelming. Now truly, our family is complete. The great part of journeying with God, is that it's always an adventure. He knows where we are going, and for us it is all a marvelous surprise. Looking forward to sharing our family adventures as we walk daily through life and as we venture off to Ghana to bring home Mary, Nate and Isabella! It's always an adventure redefining our family!



Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Who would've thought

Not me, that's for sure! I asked for record turn around time for our immigration approval, and believe me when I say I got it. Tim came in tonight with the mail from today. He said "Why would I be getting something from homeland security"? I dropped what I was doing and said "gimme it"!!! He jokingly said he would open it, because it had his name on it. Oh no.... I handled ALL of the paperwork, I would get to open this! I figured it would be some form saying that they received our application, had our fingerprints and they would be processed in a timely fashion.

Instead what I found inside that lovely envelope was our approval form!!! How wonderful is that? God must've opened a door for a reason! I think that is something that only God could manage to assist in. We just went to the immigration office to be fingerprinted EXACTLY ONE WEEK AGO. Then there was Thanksgiving in there. Literally, we were in the office 7 days ago!!! We have our approval!!! I said it before and now I will surely say it again - SC USCIS office is the BEST!!!!

We are now officially DONE!!! I will contact our agency tomorrow, send them a copy of our approval, and EVERYTHING is now COMPLETE!!! Seriously, how exciting is that! Truly exciting!

Now, we wait. Thank goodness there are the holidays and things like that coming up. It will make the wait go a bit quicker. I can't wait to see the face of my daughter. I seriously think that God has control of all of this. Who ever heard of a turn around time of 7 days? We were there last week Wednesday and the approval date was Monday. And remember, there was a holiday in there. They approved it in basically one or two business days!!! Maybe our daughter is born and God moved this along so we would be paper ready in time to go get her. Maybe she has been born and we needed to be ready quickly so she would not get older and outside of our approved age range. Whatever the reason, I thank GOD for making this happen so quickly. Finally, my part is done and I can now sit back and wait for my daughter. (probably one of the hardest parts, I know!).

Celebrating in SC!!!

In Christ,
Charity

4 comments:

Corinne said...

One step closer!! Wow that is fast!! Time to celebrate!

Heather said...

Wow! So Excited for you!

H

George said...

A big CONGRATULATIONS on getting the approval from USCIS - I'm hoping to get our final hs to them next week and will be awaiting our approval too!

Monica said...

great news!!! congrats!