Mèsi to Gloria!...not so much to USCIS yet.

So it's been almost 4 weeks since I posted last. I certainly thought that by now we would have received our I800 approval and probably would have already had the girls' visa appointment complete in Haiti.

Nope.

I restrained myself on more than one occasion from writing either a crying with frustration or fuming with anger post at how long this is taking our government to process this. I began calling to follow up...the first time I called I was basically told that they had no information, after that I began insisting to talk to the officer in charge of our case. The first time I spoke to her she told me that she hadn't had time to look at our file yet. Say whaaaaat? She promised to look at it first thing the next week. I called twice the following week. Nope. And another promise to finish looking at it soon.

Finally I talked to her today and she told me that she was ready to approve their files, but that now our fingerprints were about to expire. I asked myself how we didn't catch that and realized that is because when we originally filed this THREE months ago (this should just take a couple of weeks) we had plenty of time to take care of that, and then that fell off our radar.

Anyway, she apologized about not getting back to me sooner since they'd been having bad weather (????) and said that she sent in a fingerprint refresh for us. At least she didn't just submit a request for us to do that through the mail, however once she gets that back she said she'll approve the files but still has to send them to her supervisor for review. I'm just so frustrated that our government is the side holding things up. I know this won't be the last time we are drumming our fingers at hold-ups and waits during this adoption, but I am anxious to at least get this step done and get that visa appointment done! Pretty soon we'll be headed into Carnival and that will come with its own delays...let's just get this ball rolling! I want my little girls home!!!

Now that I have that off my chest...

Last weekend we were able to attend a Haitian Creole boot camp put on by Gloria, who is Haitian and is an amazing teacher! It was such a neat experience to come together with other people who love Haiti and who are either adopting, facilitating adoptions & running schools there (Chareyl), married to a Haitian & operating a non-profit there (Sharla)...and to have Noah and Lincoln there learning with us too!

The class was Friday night and all day Saturday. It was a great base to starting to learn the language and I feel like I can attack the online course that we have now. I can't wait to go to Haiti and use the language to communicate with our girls and other kids at the orphanage! AND! Mark leaves tonight for his visit with them!!!! If everything goes smoothly with his connection then Mark and his mom will arrive in Haiti tomorrow morning. Praying that is the case, it's a short connection and we're having crummy weather here right now too.

I am especially on edge for Mark to meet with the clinic doctor tomorrow to go over some medical information on one of our girls. That will bring me a lot of peace of mind that everything is being done for her that can be. I am also especially anxious to FaceTime with those two sweet girls!! Mark and I spent quite a while trying a few different things to record FaceTime calls or use an app that's new to us called Zoom. Anyway, we ran into a lot of problems, but think we got it all figured out. I really want to be able to record this calls so I can watch and re-watch them during this long and difficult wait, but also so the girls can see them someday. I am soooo excited to see their sweet faces! I hope they remember me.