Fingerprints....DONE!

It has been a loooooong month of waiting. We got our final copies of our homestudy in the mail on March 22nd. We mailed the I600A (Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition) to USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) on March 23rd. The application was for Darrell, myself, and Josh. Anyone 18 and older living in the household needs to be FBI fingerprinted. A week later we got a letter stating the application was received and forwarded for further processing...which would be in St. Paul, MN. A few days after that we got our fingerprint appointments...but not all of us...Josh's was missing. So I spent lots of time on the phone trying to get to the right person. I was given an email address...wrong one. I was given another email address...PERFECT. The gal I was in contact with was soooo very helpful. The reason Josh did not have an appointment was b/c in the homestudy it stated he is a college student. I explained how he comes home some weekends and will be living here for the summer. This gal got him an appointment but it was for a week after ours. That seemed like forever. She suggested we take Josh with to our appointment and explain what happened and ask if they would do him also. THEY DID! Thank You God!!! Getting up at 3am to make it in PLENTY of time for our 8am appointment in Fargo was so worth it. Oh, and satan was really trying to cause trouble like he always tries to do when something good is happening. He would love more than anything for Isaiah to remain an orphan but he lost...again. All the "little" things he tried throwing our way were thrown right back at him. When we got home I sent an email to the gal who was helping me earlier and told her Josh was able to get fingerprinted and I told her my concern about our file getting "lost" on someone's desk. She reassured me that SHE has our file and she had been checking the system for our prints to come through. So I pray this part of the process goes fast as that means there still is a chance we can travel mid to late June.

There is only ONE more little document we are waiting for...the I-171H which is the USCIS' approval for us to proceed with our international adoption. Now it is time to "hurry up and wait" again.