COUNT DOWN TO MEET OUR GIRLS!!!

Yup!!  You read it right!  We are counting down the days until we meet our girls.  Unfortunately, this meeting will be the true definition of bitter sweet.  We are leaving on Saturday to file our I600 in country.  Our agency found out last week that the US Embassy is traveling to the region where our girls are from sometime mid to the end of June.  They told our agency that only the cases that have I600 approval (for those of you who don't know adoption paperwork lingo, this is just code for "they have all the documents they need, have looked over them and approved that they all look good") OR the families who have traveled to Kinshasa and filed your I600 in person to the US Embassy in Kinshasa.  AND, even still, they are NOT confirming that they will for sure investigate our case, they will take our paper work with and IF they have time, will investigate our case.  So, we REALLY need prayers and lots of them PLEASE!  If they do investigate our case, we could be going back to get the girls and bring them home in 4 to 12 weeks!!!!!  If they do NOT investigate our case, it could be up to 6 months before the return to the region to investigate cases :( 

So, in addition to prayers that they DO investigate our case, would you please pray for our girls.  They are about to endure a whole lot of transition and my heart is just aching for them.  They got on an airplane today and flew to the Transition house where they will remain until they are allowed to come home.  We are going to arrive on Sunday and if we want to spend time with the girls, they have to be brought to us at the hotel that we are staying at and they will stay with us there.  I am THRILLED for myself about this but so torn for them.  At their young ages they are just going to have such a hard time understanding it all.  In addition, they will then have to be taken back to the Transition house after spending the week with us.  And to top it off, they speak a tribal language called Tshiluba.  We tried to find a translation book to English, so that we could maybe be able to communicate a word or two and there is no such thing.  So, if nothing else, we should have some pretty hilarious stories to tell about trying to communicate :)  We know God is bigger than language barriers and He can give them a sense of peace with us and an assurance that WE ARE COMING BACK TO GET THEM!!!

The other piece of bad news is this trip is quite a spendy one.  We were notified on Friday and are leaving the following Saturday...incase you were wondering, those weren't exactly cheap tickets :)  We also had to express send our passports and immunization records to apply for a Visa to enter the DRC, we are praying that they get back to us Friday!!!  Our agency had to return a whole bunch of paper work back to us this week so we can take it with us!!!!!  So, you will notice that our thermometer has increased in total.  We aren't positive what this trip will cost but we are estimating at least $7k or $8k.

We will certainly keep the blog updated in the coming week and will be filling our private FB page with all the fun pictures we can--that is if the internet is good enough to :)  If you aren't added to our FB page and would like to be, let us know :)  Thank you for all your love and support, we are so grateful!!!!