Victory!! Hope abounds! We are so excited to report that the US government acted on behalf of the thousands of petition signatures, emails and phone calls and ruled in our favor! Those of us who are poised to re-do our paperwork will be grandfathered in. This means that we do not have to do the new type of paperwork (I800) that would have extended our wait by 6 months and possibly denied us our little girl.
Thank you for acting on our behalf to sign that petition and thank you to those of you who prayed and asked God to grant us a YES! He did answer with a YES and we now can stand at the portal to 2009 with hope that our daughter is just around the bend.
Blessings TO YOU all today for your love and concern for us and blessings FROM GOD TO US as a family who are striving to humbly walk in His way.
Sharon
This is an IMPORTANT update and we need your help with something happening in Washington. We need you to sign an online petition (below) to get the wheels moving on an issue that is poised to affect our adoption greatly. It's so important that I'm going to post it here on our old blog site because I don't want to lose anyone in sending you to our new site!
If we are not referred our daughter by March (which is likely) we will need to update our paperwork a third time. We have been expecting this. However, what we have not understood until now, is that new Hague treaty compliance laws have gone into effect and there is a debate with Homeland Security over which form we (and those like us) should use: the one we started with (I600) and so be grandfathered in? Or a new one (I800) that complies with the new laws? If we are required to do the I600, other than having to pay another $800, it will not slow us down. If, however, we are asked to complete the I800, there is an additional 6 months to wait due to slower processing of these particular forms. This means that we may have to actually turn down our referral!
We would get to the front of the line after 3 years only to have to turn down the referral we have waited for. Then what? Wait and hope that China allows us to wait for this little one whose picture is now in our hands and in our hearts? Will China give us another referral? When? It is all not clear to anyone in the adoption program nor in Homeland Security at this time what will happen. Pat and I are in the first batch of people that this affects and with the economy taking precedence at the moment, unless some muscle of voices is put behind these efforts, it may not get resolved in time for us.
God is in control of this and I know that if this is what we have to go through, then no matter how painful 2009 will be for us, we will still be able to say 'God is Good'. He is sovereign and in control of every aspect of our lives and we will trust his loving hand.
However, we all can act and we all can do something while this issue is 'hot on the table' in Washington. At the very least, we can all add our names to a petition. They want to have at least 10,000 names by Oct 18 and they have about 8000 at this writing.
At the very minimum, please sign your name at: http://www.gopetition.com/online/22112.html
If you want to do something further, you could also visit here for a few other easy ways to help us and others: http://jcics.org/5WaystoHelp.htm
Thanks for your help. Pray for this situation and pray for us to have the strength and grace to cross this new hurdle.
Sharon
