Step OFF, giant!

In the Bible, there are lots of examples of how Satan rears his ugly head to try and discourage people who have stepped out in faith.  Well, he must have gotten the memo that we have joined together with friends, family and blog followers to step out in faith with our "Sun Stand Still" prayer that God will bring us to Kennedy faster than anyone believes it is possible!  I posted last night about our "giants" and the fact that God is bigger than ALL of them!

Well, today, we received an email from our agency about a "New Ruling" that the CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs) put into place last week.  YES, even though we are SO far along in the process and SO close to travel...the new ruling does indeed apply to us.  They are requiring an extra original, signed document to be submitted with our upcoming Article 5 documents in order to process our Travel Approval.  (TA).  That meant that today, Mia and I had to rush off right after school and drive across town to Charles' office to get his signature on the document, then speed over to FedEx to make the 6:00 pick up to ensure that our document arrives to our agency tomorrow morning.  Our agency will immediately send it to China.  We are only 4 days in to our 14 day wait for the Article 5, so it will arrive well in advance to be included with the Article 5 documents when they are sent to the CCAA on October 28 as planned.

Our agency representative explained that this will not impact our Article 5 processing, because that is actually issued by the US consulate in China.  The CCAA is requesting the document, and THEY are the ones who will issue our TA.  Since this is a new ruling, nobody knows if this will impact the timing of our TA processing or not.  It COULD cause a delay for them to review that document, since they are the ones who requested it.  It is also possible that they may simply just check the file briefly before issuing our TA to be sure the document is there.  (Enter...the latest giant!)

You see, Satan wants us to be discourged.  He wants us to say, "Oh man!  We just prayed for a miracle to get us to Kennedy faster than expected and now there could be another delay!!"  Well, to that we say, "Step OFF, giant!  God will knock you down too!"  We are not going to get discouraged and bogged down in the guessing game of "what if this increases our waiting time?"  We will continue to pray, believe and thank God in advance that He will bring us to Kennedy faster than anyone thinks it is possible.  We know you will continue to join us in that prayer.

Our agency is a Christian adoption agency.  They really are awesome!  Our contact, Josh, read last night's post and sent me a very encouraging email letting me know he is also joining us in prayer that the improbable will become possible.  We are thankful for his support, and all of yours!  The link to our agency, Small World Adoption Inc., is included below on the left with links we like.  If you know anyone interested in adopting, pass the link along! 

Here is a funny, totally un-related picture of Mia after asking Charles, "REALLY, Dad??!!!  Do you ALWAYS have to take my picture?????  He gets that face OFTEN, since her entire life is a photo-shoot!

Now, here she is after her Mommy sternly reminded her to use her manners and smile for her sweet Daddy...and possibly apologize!!!  In this one, she is saying, "OOPS!  Sorry Daddy!"  That girl is a CHARACTER!