God Went To Battle

The Lord was at work.  He's been busy on our behalf.  He showed up in a really big way.  To him be the glory!  This is what happened today...

Ok, so first, I have been praying for protection and order for our paperwork.  Well, today this whole hiccup wasn’t a human hiccup. It was God. It all is His will and answering my prayer and protecting our paperwork.

So yesterday I had emailed my BFF at USCIS and told her we still didn’t have the paperwork.  No response email. I freaked out.  That’s when I called or CW to get a phone number. She gave me one, I called and actually got a human being.  I talked to the lady, gave her all our info, numbers, codes, etc…and she could not find our appointment in the system.  Ok, so she makes us a new appointment.  She says the appointment dates and times are computer generated.  They have no way of manipulating the system etc…that the appointment is created, logged in the system and the paperwork is then printed. 

Ok, so we got a fax of our new appointment time in early September. All is ok. We (ok, I am) breathing again.  Nothing can happen anyway before that – not like we are going to get the invite to travel for court.

So this morning, I get an email from my BFF at USCIS. She was responding to the one I sent yesterday.  She said she can’t reprint the form from the system, but she could reschedule us. To which I said I called yesterday, talked to this other person, and a new appointment time was scheduled and I had a fax of the paperwork.  Ok, now about 15 minutes go by and I get another email. A ‘can you please call me’ with a phone number.  So I called.

She apologized, she was out of the office yesterday and she said she called Jacksonville and talked to the officer there and explained what happened, we never received our paperwork, etc… (and we did have an appt for today!)  and she said these people have been waiting, is there a chance we can get in this week to be fingerprinted.  The guys in Jax said, yes, any day before 3:30 – just bring our fax and our ID and he would be looking for us.  My BFF said let her know when we are going and she will tell Jax when we are coming and then for me to call her when we have finished and she will be looking for our fingerprints, get them and forward them onto ET.  She said she has already checked everything else in our file and its all good and she will let me know when she gets the prints and has sent them. 

So then we also talk about the home study update that we have to send to USCIS the first part of next year (that expires for us in Feb). She said, you don’t have to wait. Go ahead and send it to me now, to her attention and she will forward to the visa office and we will be all current and updated and nothing will be left to chance or close to expiration.  So, I mailed our home study update to her today and she will get it Thursday and let me know she got it and forward it onto the Visa center.

So going back – you cannot be assigned an appointment date and time for fingerprinting just at any time. The computer generates it. The only way you know when that will be is when they go into their system and request the next available date and time and assign it.  We were assigned an appointment for today.  The computer ‘glitch’ wasn’t a glitch. It was the Lord intervening for his will. 

We now have a personal relationship with our worker at USCIS. We now know that our home study update will be sent in well before the update is needed and it will be done with personal care – not just a file being forwarded, but someone watching out for it and making sure it gets where it needs to go. 

As Kelly told me today, God went to battle for you guys.  The enemy doesn't like adoption and will try to stop it anyway he can.  But he will not win.  Kelly also shared this verse with me...{please keep them in your prayers too as they are in the process of adopting a baby who is about to enter this world.}

Exodus 14:13 "And Moses said to the people, 'Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you only have to be silent."

God is protecting and ordering our steps and keeping guard over our son and our journey to him. Without a doubt, I know that this was the Lord's doing. {I am sure he is smiling and laughing at me too.}