Sort of like a roller coaster...

Today marks 3 weeks since the all-important I600 was approved and still no sign of NVC in. :-(

Each day that goes by, it gets harder and harder to hold back the tears and to remember that the Lord is in control and that someday this will all be a distant memory.

For those who don't have a clue as to what I'm talking about, I'll attempt to explain. After the I600 was approved it was "supposed" to be sent to the National Visa Center (NVC) and get logged into the system. Then within a day or two it is logged out and sent to the embassy in Seoul. Then things can really start happening on the Korea side. In MOST cases this takes about a week and sometimes up to 2 weeks to happen.

Well, since we can call the NVC to check on things and see if our papers were logged in I started calling about a week after approval. After 2 weeks, I really started to panic and started attempting to contact our local immigration officer. He is well-known for being very slow and impossible to reach. You call his extension and the message says to email. You email him and he never responds. You go down to the immigration office and are not allowed to speak to anyone, especially him, without an appointment. We already had an issue earlier with him sending our things back to us unneccesarily. Dealing with our local immigration is like hitting a brick wall sometimes.

This week I eventually got the extension of someone who doesn't even deal with adoption cases, but was very helpful in continuing to nudge the adoption guy to finally respond to me. All I wanted was for him to re-send the I600 approval, and I question whether or not it even got sent the first time. It seems to have gotten lost or something, who knows.
Finally on Wednesday he said he re-sent it via email (why he couldn't have emailed it in the first place is beyond me!) and the NVC said to allow 24 hours for it to be processed.

So, now 48 hours later... NOTHING. It is still not logged in and I was told to call back in another week! What??!! What happened to 24 hours? UGH to the government!!!

So yes, the adoption process is similiar to being on a roller-coaster. There are SO many ups and downs and even times when you are going to be sick (like now) but I know that God will work it all together and there WILL be great joy at the end of it all.

It has been a hard few weeks and I know we still have a ways to go, but I am continuing to study Phillipians and trying not to focus on my circumstances (which is really hard) and instead looking to the Source of true joy... Christ alone.

Praying for good news this coming week!