Our American Goverment Doing What It Does Best

Hello to everyone. Well we are now completing our 11th day away from home and 9th day in Armenia. We are becoming very familar with Yerevan. We do all of our grocery shopping and eating out without our translator now. We have learned our way around, learned where there are English speaking people, and have learned a few Armenian words to get us by. Our life since Monday has been just sitting and waiting on our American government :) To clarify where we are in the process, the adoption is final and we are complete with everything through the Armenian government and court including her medical examination and passport issuance (btw it only took 24 hours to receive her Armenian passport). We are now merely waiting on the US Embassy to give us a VISA for Payson so that we can leave. Even though by law when Payson lands on US soil she will become a US citizen, she still has to be issued an American VISA before we can leave. I do not for any reason understand this logic, but I guess our American government has to have more paper to push. I'm not sure. We have all ready received three...count them three...separate approvals from the USCIS (Immigration office in US) before we could even come here to finalize the adoption. They have received our paperwork multiple times and issued us a preapproval for her VISA in June. We now have to wait for the US Embassy to review all of our paperwork again, interview us, and then issue the VISA. It really reminds me of the short story that you have probably seen come across your email talking about if Noah had to build the Ark in the US in 2011.

Well we received our interview appointment with the US Embassy for Friday at 2pm. After the interview, it takes 2-4 days for them to issue the VISA. Our attorney, Ed, is hoping that the wait for the VISA will be short since it has taken them an unusual amount of time to set our interview. We will pray hard as all 4 of us are becoming restless.

Payson is doing well. She had a fussy morning today, but took an almost 2 hour nap and woke up in a much better mood. This is by far the longest nap she has taken so far. You know the term, he/she sleeps like a baby. Well Payson has not been that way. You can tell that she has never felt at ease enough to truly rest. For the first few days she would sleep during the day with one eye partially cracked. She is becoming more at ease and with that she is closing her eyes all the way and sleeping more peacefully. This short experience with Payson, has put me on a mission to advocate for children to be adopted out of orphanages and see as many brought to forever homes as possible. No child should have to be scared to sleep or scared to not have food. Every child deserves a mom and/or dad. I understand on a deeper level why God commands us as Christians to take care of our orphans.

Please continue to pray for our patience and sanity while we wait. Those of you who know me well, know that sitting around doing nothing is something that I just don't do very well. I know God has a plan and knew the timeline before we did. I just allowed my hopes to rise when the Armenian government finished their part ahead of schedule. Love to everyone!

Jenn