Prayers Needed
Our dear friends and family,
If you are a praying person, we ask that you please pray for us. It is with a heavy heart to let you know that we will not be coming home next week.
Our Embassy visit was postponed from Monday to Tuesday as one of the consulars was sick, yet thankfully they got us in the next day which is normally not the case. On Tuesday we made the trip to Kampala and went in for our Visa interview at 2:15. I spoke with consular for 45 minutes and he had no concerns regarding the boys' cases and essentially "cleared" Paul and I. The next step is having to interview the boys' biological family that are "releasing" them to us for adoption. For us this is 3 relatives...2 for L and 1 for J. When they went in to be interviewed (the last step before awarding us their Visas), we were told they could not be interviewed as they did not have the correct form of ID.
Long story short...for the last 10+ years the Embassy has been accepting residential village IDs for their interviewing family members. As of September 1, 2015 they changed this requirement to a Ugandan national ID (this includes a passport, a driver's license, a voter ID card or a National ID card), which has to be in laminated plastic card format. While this seems straight-forward, it's not. Very few Ugandans have passports and they take a while to get issued. Voter ID cards are almost non-existent and not actually needed to vote, so no one really has them. A driver's license requires 4 weeks of driving school and then another 3 months wait time (however unless you drive for your source of income, you don't get one). A Ugandan National ID card is the newest form of ID, and even extremely wealthy people/people in high-ranking government positions don't even have one. they are extremely difficult to get and I read a statistic last night that only 400 Ugandans have one (not sure how accurate this is now). Additionally, Uganda is in the middle of election season which means that every low level government task is essentially put on hold. This means no voter ID cards or national ID cards are being printed at this time. When I asked our lawyer for a time frame of when they MAY be printed, she estimated January. And that's best case scenario.
I knew in July that this change at the Embassy was going to be taken into effect and had e-mailed our orphanage director notifying her and inquiring on this. She sent me a reply e-mail back saying that they are always on top of the IDs for the family, and they never have a problem at the Embassy. Additionally, I checked again when I arrived in country and they seemed to brush it off like everything was handled. So I assumed it was. Sigh.
So after our Embassy appointment (where we were sent away without completing the interview), I called everyone involved in our case, who all declined that they knew anything about this. When I reminded our director that I had sent her an e-mail in July stating this, she basically denied that this was the case and did not remember my notification. Once I had this conversation with her, I knew this was bad. So I sat outside the U.S. Embassy and sobbed. And sobbed. And sobbed. I was grieving the loss of all the hope and stamina I had mustered to make it home, and Paul and I just stared at each other in pure disbelief. I called my parents and asked them to pray through my sobs, and then composed myself enough to call our director back. She told us to go first to the lawyer's office to debrief and allow them to question the family (they speak Luganda and only a little English), and then come back to Jinja to speak with the in-country director, William, in person. So we go to the lawyers office and explain what's going on. She questions the family and we find out that L's side had applied for their national IDs in December 2014 and has yet to received them, but J's side had not applied at all. When she told me this I literally wanted to throw-up. They've been waiting 11 months and STILL don't have them?! So I kindly ask her what this means and what the heck do we do?! We talk through a few things (I'll discuss later), then we get in the car and drive back to Jinja. Paul and I were distraught. We were trying to speak life, hope and joy out of our mouths even though we wanted to blow a gasket, but we virtually rode home in silence while trying to contain our 2 super cranky boys who hadn't napped or eaten all day (you're not allowed to bring food into the Embassy).
So here's all the information we've gathered over the last 24 hours...after hours of talking to the lawyer, to William, to the director in California (Mandy), to other adoptive families who have gone through this...
- We can try to find the receipt of application for L's family and then have them sign affidavits stating when they applied and how long they've been waiting and see if the Embassy would accept this with the residential village ID.
- J's family hasn't applied at all and doesn't have a birth certificate. So we are going to 1) apply for his birth certificate and then see if we can get him to apply for a passport which take at a minimum 3 weeks, but probably more like 4-6.
- Other adoptive families have paid a bribe to the passport office to get the families passport's "expedited". Which really means someone forces it through and then pockets your money. We WILL NOT do this. We will not add to the corruption of this country. We've prided ourselves on completing an ethical adoption, and we won't change that now. However, there hasn't been a family I spoke with to go through (since the Sept. 1 change) that didn't do this. Sigh.
- We have contacted our local congressman to see if his office will petition the U.S. Embassy on our behalf, as this change to the national ID is such a ridiculous exception. To put it in perspective, even the former attorney general doesn't have one. We are asking them to make an exception and interview our family members since they have applied for their national ID, but just don't have the IDs in hand yet.
- The director Mandy is also petitioning the State Department to intervene.
- I have also e-mailed the Embassy explaining the severity of this change to the National ID, and frankly told them that if they expect Americans to add to the corruption by paying bribes to get this done, then I will not do that. We'll see what they come back with...
At this point, we have no idea how long this will take. We have no idea when we will come home. We don't know what the next steps are. We are here indefinitely until this gets resolved OR the Embassy gives us a pardon and agrees to interview the family members. We are running through all the options, but in all honestly we're scared. We are almost out of everything we brought, as we planned for 3 months, and have no real way to get things here without them getting lost or pilfered through. We KNOW God can perform a miracle. We KNOW He can do the impossible. We are expecting Him to intervene on our behalf. But we are also trying to be realistic as we are in a 3rd world country with minimal resources.
Here are a few of our personal scenarios...
1) Paul comes home to work and I stay behind with both boys. I'm crying thinking about this.
2) If L's family can get their IDs soon, maybe Paul will come home with L and I will stay behind with J until his family can get their passports.
3) We both stay here, and find someone to rent our house/fundraise some more to help cover the extra costs.
4) God performs a HUGE miracle for us and we ALL come home ASAP.
I'm not quite sure I have the words to express how we're feeling, but we are working hard to remain hopeful and expectant, and trying not to let the boys feel our anxiousness. Needless to say we are tired and weary and just want to be home. We were excited to be home before the holidays, but unless God intervenes, I don't think that will be the case.
Please pray. Please stand by us. Please send us encouragement. We need it. Every day is still a challenge. Every day is a mental battle. And now we're feeling the extra weight on our shoulders. We want to keep our family together, but at this point we don't know how realistic this is financially.
We covet your prayers. Thank you for standing by us.
If you are a praying person, we ask that you please pray for us. It is with a heavy heart to let you know that we will not be coming home next week.
Our Embassy visit was postponed from Monday to Tuesday as one of the consulars was sick, yet thankfully they got us in the next day which is normally not the case. On Tuesday we made the trip to Kampala and went in for our Visa interview at 2:15. I spoke with consular for 45 minutes and he had no concerns regarding the boys' cases and essentially "cleared" Paul and I. The next step is having to interview the boys' biological family that are "releasing" them to us for adoption. For us this is 3 relatives...2 for L and 1 for J. When they went in to be interviewed (the last step before awarding us their Visas), we were told they could not be interviewed as they did not have the correct form of ID.
Long story short...for the last 10+ years the Embassy has been accepting residential village IDs for their interviewing family members. As of September 1, 2015 they changed this requirement to a Ugandan national ID (this includes a passport, a driver's license, a voter ID card or a National ID card), which has to be in laminated plastic card format. While this seems straight-forward, it's not. Very few Ugandans have passports and they take a while to get issued. Voter ID cards are almost non-existent and not actually needed to vote, so no one really has them. A driver's license requires 4 weeks of driving school and then another 3 months wait time (however unless you drive for your source of income, you don't get one). A Ugandan National ID card is the newest form of ID, and even extremely wealthy people/people in high-ranking government positions don't even have one. they are extremely difficult to get and I read a statistic last night that only 400 Ugandans have one (not sure how accurate this is now). Additionally, Uganda is in the middle of election season which means that every low level government task is essentially put on hold. This means no voter ID cards or national ID cards are being printed at this time. When I asked our lawyer for a time frame of when they MAY be printed, she estimated January. And that's best case scenario.
I knew in July that this change at the Embassy was going to be taken into effect and had e-mailed our orphanage director notifying her and inquiring on this. She sent me a reply e-mail back saying that they are always on top of the IDs for the family, and they never have a problem at the Embassy. Additionally, I checked again when I arrived in country and they seemed to brush it off like everything was handled. So I assumed it was. Sigh.
So after our Embassy appointment (where we were sent away without completing the interview), I called everyone involved in our case, who all declined that they knew anything about this. When I reminded our director that I had sent her an e-mail in July stating this, she basically denied that this was the case and did not remember my notification. Once I had this conversation with her, I knew this was bad. So I sat outside the U.S. Embassy and sobbed. And sobbed. And sobbed. I was grieving the loss of all the hope and stamina I had mustered to make it home, and Paul and I just stared at each other in pure disbelief. I called my parents and asked them to pray through my sobs, and then composed myself enough to call our director back. She told us to go first to the lawyer's office to debrief and allow them to question the family (they speak Luganda and only a little English), and then come back to Jinja to speak with the in-country director, William, in person. So we go to the lawyers office and explain what's going on. She questions the family and we find out that L's side had applied for their national IDs in December 2014 and has yet to received them, but J's side had not applied at all. When she told me this I literally wanted to throw-up. They've been waiting 11 months and STILL don't have them?! So I kindly ask her what this means and what the heck do we do?! We talk through a few things (I'll discuss later), then we get in the car and drive back to Jinja. Paul and I were distraught. We were trying to speak life, hope and joy out of our mouths even though we wanted to blow a gasket, but we virtually rode home in silence while trying to contain our 2 super cranky boys who hadn't napped or eaten all day (you're not allowed to bring food into the Embassy).
So here's all the information we've gathered over the last 24 hours...after hours of talking to the lawyer, to William, to the director in California (Mandy), to other adoptive families who have gone through this...
- We can try to find the receipt of application for L's family and then have them sign affidavits stating when they applied and how long they've been waiting and see if the Embassy would accept this with the residential village ID.
- J's family hasn't applied at all and doesn't have a birth certificate. So we are going to 1) apply for his birth certificate and then see if we can get him to apply for a passport which take at a minimum 3 weeks, but probably more like 4-6.
- Other adoptive families have paid a bribe to the passport office to get the families passport's "expedited". Which really means someone forces it through and then pockets your money. We WILL NOT do this. We will not add to the corruption of this country. We've prided ourselves on completing an ethical adoption, and we won't change that now. However, there hasn't been a family I spoke with to go through (since the Sept. 1 change) that didn't do this. Sigh.
- We have contacted our local congressman to see if his office will petition the U.S. Embassy on our behalf, as this change to the national ID is such a ridiculous exception. To put it in perspective, even the former attorney general doesn't have one. We are asking them to make an exception and interview our family members since they have applied for their national ID, but just don't have the IDs in hand yet.
- The director Mandy is also petitioning the State Department to intervene.
- I have also e-mailed the Embassy explaining the severity of this change to the National ID, and frankly told them that if they expect Americans to add to the corruption by paying bribes to get this done, then I will not do that. We'll see what they come back with...
At this point, we have no idea how long this will take. We have no idea when we will come home. We don't know what the next steps are. We are here indefinitely until this gets resolved OR the Embassy gives us a pardon and agrees to interview the family members. We are running through all the options, but in all honestly we're scared. We are almost out of everything we brought, as we planned for 3 months, and have no real way to get things here without them getting lost or pilfered through. We KNOW God can perform a miracle. We KNOW He can do the impossible. We are expecting Him to intervene on our behalf. But we are also trying to be realistic as we are in a 3rd world country with minimal resources.
Here are a few of our personal scenarios...
1) Paul comes home to work and I stay behind with both boys. I'm crying thinking about this.
2) If L's family can get their IDs soon, maybe Paul will come home with L and I will stay behind with J until his family can get their passports.
3) We both stay here, and find someone to rent our house/fundraise some more to help cover the extra costs.
4) God performs a HUGE miracle for us and we ALL come home ASAP.
I'm not quite sure I have the words to express how we're feeling, but we are working hard to remain hopeful and expectant, and trying not to let the boys feel our anxiousness. Needless to say we are tired and weary and just want to be home. We were excited to be home before the holidays, but unless God intervenes, I don't think that will be the case.
Please pray. Please stand by us. Please send us encouragement. We need it. Every day is still a challenge. Every day is a mental battle. And now we're feeling the extra weight on our shoulders. We want to keep our family together, but at this point we don't know how realistic this is financially.
We covet your prayers. Thank you for standing by us.