Delays and a MIRACLE!

Things were slow in Uzbek in August and September of 2007. September 1st was their Independence Day and the fall is cotton picking season. Everything seems to shut down in the country during this time to get all the cotton picked.

Out of the blue, I get a call from our social worker. She told me that the lady from DCFS that has to approve us to be able to get our 171 approval with box #3 checked, called her and asked where the information about the child we are adopting is. Cathy told her we haven’t received a referral yet. The DCFS lady didn’t remember all that had transpired before when we were dealing with this! She had even talked to Victoria at our placement agency in CA! Well, she wanted to talk to Victoria again. After that she agreed to approve us, even though this isn't normally done before having a referral! It is a miracle straight from God because there was no reason she should have even been looking at our paperwork.

While we were on vacation in September, we got word that there had been some law changes in Uzbekistan regarding adoptions. They want to model their program after Russia, so we now have to meet our child to approve our referral. That means that we have to take one trip to meet our child and a second trip to finalize the adoption. This was very disappointing because we had picked this country for certain reasons and now those reasons no longer exist. We wanted to only make one trip to keep costs lower, to not be away from Kiara too long, and to not have to meet our daughter and then have to leave her and come back months later to get her! But, maybe God knows this is the country that our daughter is in and he waited to have the laws change until our paperwork was in the country. Because if we had known this before, I doubt we would have started the process for Uzbekistan. I trust Him that He knows best.

So, after we got home from vacation, I got our second I-171H approval with box #3 checked. I waited a few weeks and emailed the US Embassy in Uzbek to see if they had received the cable. They had not. I then realized that my 171 said that they had forwarded my approval to the National Visa Center. In the past the USCIS offices had sent the cables. Now, no one could tell me how it works when the approval goes through the NVC! Of course there is no way to talk to anyone at the NVC, I did find an email that I got an auto response to and have yet to get a reply from an actual person. So, I emailed Uzbek again and they again said they had not received my cable. All I could do now is wait to see if the NVC would reply to my email. Plus, life was getting really busy, so I just left it alone for awhile. It wasn’t holding us up, but it could if we got a referral of a child. After Kiara’s birthday, someone on the message boards that I participate in said that her approval had been sent to the NVC and she had confirmed that her cable had made it to Uzbek. Mine should have been processed before hers, so I took the chance and emailed the US Embassy again. I really didn’t think they were going to have it and was prepared for a frustrating journey of trying to figure out what to do. But, I was wrong and on November 14, 2007 they told me that they had received our approval to adopt!!!!!!