SUCCESS!!!

Thank you to everyone that was praying for us today regarding the apostilling "hiccup" we needed to resolve today. We are good to go! Well, good to ship our dossier over to Ukraine as soon as the other document gets here from Indiana, which should be Monday. (Wait, I just checked the tracking and it left Oak Creek - south side of Milw - at 6pm tonight! Maybe it will be here tomorrow?!? Is Fed Ex open tomorrow? I'll find out!) Anyway, today went very, very well! For how panicked I was last night, the Lord smoothed the bumps and took care of everything for me.

Just in case you need a little story to put you to sleep, here you go...Sweet Nancy (my most wonderful state side paperwork helper) answered my panic email from last night right away this morning. She has such a good way of calming me down. :-)  She recommended calling the Sec of State (SoS) office right away. They needed to be redone. I called right away and the regular lady (the one that goofed up) is out of the office today (ack!), but the person who answered said bring them down and she would fix them - today. Great!  But how do the fix them? She said they put a big X through the first certificate and write "void" on it, then attach a new certificate. Hmmm...not sure that is going to fly w/ this country. She said it's up to me whether or not I want to bring new documents or not. So, I email Nancy and she's never seen it done like that before. I'm NOT taking a chance, this is WAY too important. New documents it is then. I start printing the 14 documents we need redone that I have here. Pat agrees to drive back to our bank over his early lunch hour and sign them with me. GREAT! We can do this!

Now, the other document that was wrong was the notarized state police clearance/background check. This is the one we needed to send in ink fingerprints for, pay $20, wait a week, etc. I called down to the number on the letter, and explained my story. And wouldn't you know it - just as the Lord would have it - the person I was talking to was the one that notarized the letter! She pulled it up on her computer but said the man that signed it was out of the office today, but the other person that could sign it was leaving at noon. (It was 10:20am. Not going to make it.) I asked if she could do it for me ahead of time and I could stop by and pick it up later in the afternoon. Sure! No problem! Oh, everyone was SO nice today!

So, we meet at the bank, get our documents signed and notarized, stop for lunch quick as I feed the baby, and off to Mad-town we go!  Everything is so much easier the second time. We knew exactly what corner to park in at the ramp. The kids wanted to park on the very top floor. Sure, why not? :-)  We dropped off the first 14 documents and took a nice leisurely 2 block stroll alongside the beautiful capital to the Justice Dept. We got the letter in less than 2 minutes and went back to the SoS office. They were almost done and did the last one quick. I gave her a prayer card with Elijah's sweet face on it and she added it to their "wall of fame" of many other adoptive babies that have come home. Then we were out of there in 5 minutes!!! Praise the Lord! It couldn't have gone any better!  Of course, it would have been better to not have gone at all. But as I posted quick this morning, this could have been SOOO much worse.  The documents we could have needed redone could have been our medical forms - yikes!, mortgage/home ownership letter, homestudy license, etc. Any of those would have been much more difficult to get redone. Even worse, our whole dossier could have been over in EE before the errors were found. Or, I could have waited until Monday when I got the last piece before I checked them. I'm so amazed at the Lord's goodness and faithfulness!  What Satan meant for harm and delay and disruption, the Lord used for good to bring Himself glory! Amen!

Another little bit of "good" that came from this, the kids have had the first several lessons on elevator "manners". Don't stand right in front of the door while we are waiting to get on, step to the side so others can get on, get on before the door closes on you, etc. They also saw a bit how a parking ramp works, a little how our gov't works, and most importantly, how good God is. While I'll fully admit no 3 R's were taught at our school today, some good life lessons were learned. Learning isn't just academics.

I'll leave you with a photo in front of the building that we visited 4x in the last 4 days - taking the elevator up to the 10th floor each time. It's hard to see, but it says Secretary of State on the glass right about the kids' heads. You can see Sarah in the blue in the reflection. :-) And yes, I know this isn't quite how you are supposed to wear this Ergo baby carrier, but she was antsy upstairs so I took her out for a bit. She went right back in after this. Ok, good night now!!!

P.S. I found out how to pronounce "apostille" today. It's "AP-uh-steel". Who knew? Not me...my kids aren't the only ones learning things!