The visa situation wasn’t going well. We had started the process in November, and chased down every rabbit they asked us to chase We had received an email from the embassy at the end of April that included:

Your below is incorrect, and I do not appreciate being quoted on things I did not say. If you fail to provide the required documents, the case will be denied.

And:

In my experience, petitioners often hear what they want to hear, and this case is an example.  The below is a misstatement of facts.

So we made another trip into the Embassy, and we asked what we needed. The gentlemen who wrote the above wasn’t available, so we talked to someone who didn’t know anything about what we were trying to do. We started over with her, but she told us what we needed; a letter from a government official who would say that we had had legal custody of the twins for two years.

We knew someone in the government we had worked with in the adoption. She still worked for the government, and told us that she would be glad to write the letter for us. She told us that she would write it by the end of the week and drop it off at the orphanage.

The end of the week came. No letter.

We called her on Friday, and she said that we could pick it up from the orphanage on Monday. We were going into town anyway, so we said that would be great. There was flooding in Nairobi, so the usual one hour trip took three hours. We called the orphanage. No letter.

We called Margaret, and asked if we could pick it up. She said yes. We asked her where her office was. She said `I cannot tell you. Go to the Insurance Plaza and call me from there.’

At that point, although it wasn’t far, traffic was so weird that we decided to get a cab. We were blessed; we got a nice big guy who wasn’t afraid to go wherever he needed to go to get us there. At one point, we were in the middle of an intersection and it looked like a bad movie; cars were going in every direction. He just kept pushing until we got to the insurance plaza. We called Margaret.

Margaret: Just stand on the corner. I will come out and get you.
Us: Ok.

We waited about ten minutes. We were afraid it looked like a drug buy, but Margaret finally came by with the letter. We read it and thanked her, and she ran back to a meeting.

We were thrilled, and after thanking our cab driver for braving the drive back to our car, began the drive home. We had to go through water that was almost up to our car windows, but after a few close calls, we got home.

We had planned to call the Embassy the next day and try to schedule an appointment, but we got a shocking call at 7:30 the next morning. We had called the Embassy. We had called the Embassy dozens of times and left dozens of messages that had never been returned. Our contact person had been gratuitously rude to us on several occasions, and had written the emails referenced above.

And he called to apologize. He told us that our hearts were in the right place, and he was sorry for giving us the wrong information about the agency he had told us to contact. I read the letter we had received, and he said that was great.

We got word today that our visas were approved.

There are two wonderful things that occurred through this process:

• We asked people to pray, because we didn’t know what else to do anymore. So many people wrote and offered to call their elected officials, to write letters, to do anything they could to help. We were overwhelmed by that.

But what we saw was that prayer changed this guy’s heart. He went from being antagonistic to being kind, and the only thing that changed was that we asked people to pray. God changed his heart.

• We were determined to try to embrace the process, and while we were at the Embassy to drop off our paperwork, we saw a young American couple who were there trying to get out of the country as fast as they could because he was self employed and they had been in Kenyan for months trying to adopt a child.

Because of what we had been through, we could tell him where to go and who to talk to. We have good friends that have come back to Kenya to adopt another child, and we think that we can save them weeks of time because we know some of the pitfalls to avoid.

We are so grateful for the visas, but we are more grateful for friends who would stand with us and pray in our hour of need. And I am most grateful for beginning to learn how to embrace His process, and seeing the fruit that results from that.

We have seen the power of prayer, and the strength of His glory. Thank you for helping us to find Him in the midst of all of this.

Your pal

Steve