Charting a Course

Navigation requires having a plan, charting a course, and then preparing for chaos on the open seas. After much prayer, careful consideration, and discussion, we have a course heading in the midst of the tempest we seem stuck in. Of the two options, neither of which was great, we have decided to set sail for the UK where we can enter on a 6 month tourist visa (both nationalities) and prayerfully see the N600-K citizenship process come to completion in that time frame.

Now that we have a heading, the work of getting underway begins in earnest. We can start to fix dates and work backwards. Several friends of offered to help with storage, many more offered to help in any way needed. MTW is working to help us get set up and for Luke to pulpit supply in a church with a pastoral vacancy. We can begin looking into concrete travel plans, make arrangements for handing over the house, canceling various services, and brining this time in Germany to a close.

There are still significant hurdles in our path. The N600-K average wait time in St. Louis was recently updated to 65 months. It is absolutely inconceivable to us how 8.5 months can suddenly jump to 65 months…or why a process only designed for adoptive children of US citizens who live overseas would take 65 months to complete even in the worst of settings. We are hoping our lawyer can help us refile in a different city with a shorter wait time (which we have to believe is pretty much every other city) and to push for a fast completion. However, even with that we will be resetting the time clock as a transfer will lose any progress thus far. The bright side is that with a 65 month wait time, we are relatively certain nothing has been done with our case in St. Louis and so we likely aren’t actually losing any time.

We are also still in process for the Brazilian passport renewal. We need these passports to come back so that we can apply for the electronic travel permission to enter the UK. Thankfully that is a relatively straightforward and quick process, but we would like to be able to wrap that up as soon as possible and have one less thing hanging over our heads. Based on estimated timelines of 6 weeks, this would put us pretty close to the beginning of July, cutting things a bit tighter than ideal.

As you can see, we still have plenty of prayer topics and things we are trusting the Lord with. The waters do not look smooth at all and we anticipate storms ahead. However, we are thankful to have a course heading, it means we can raise the anchor and start setting off. Though we don’t know how the journey will play out, we do know the One who controls it all – and we are thankful to be in His hands.

Adoption is not for the faint of heart…and though we know that, we do feel like this journey has been even more tumultuous than “standard”. But then again, none of our adoption journeys have gone even close to plan or “standard”. Thankfully God is sovereign even when things are not “standard”.