Your Prayers are Working!

We received two important documents in this mail this week! God is so good to get these in before the holidays! First we received Scott's employer reference with the apostille (government certification). We've heard that CA can be picky about apostilling documents, so we feel very fortunate that ours worked the first time. Also, I've mentioned many times that we've been waiting for FBI clearance. I've been trying not to get my hopes up about getting the clearances before Christmas. When the government shut down they stopped processing fingerprints, so we knew they would be backed up. Normally the clearances take 6-8 weeks, and we just received ours today (only about 7 weeks)! So now we send those off to Washington, D.C. to get them apostilled by the federal government. Your prayers have been surely helping us!

The final document that we need prayers for is our I-797. We got more fingerprints done with the USCIS, and that is the last step before getting the I-797 clearance. We are hoping to get the document by the beginning of January.

Please also pray for our girl during this Christmas season. We have no idea if they do any type of celebration at the orphanage (it is a Catholic orphanage). Our main prayer is that she would have a full belly and know that her mommy and daddy love her. I won't be able to send anything to her until she is officially referred to us by the Colombian government.

My last bit of news is to save the date for February 8th. We are going to have an awesome Valentines Dinner fundraiser at our church (Momentum Eagles Landing). We are hosting a pick-a-prize auction, and will have childcare as well. The proceeds from this fundraiser will go towards our cost of travel to Colombia. Hopefully this will be our last fundraiser before going to get our girl! Please plan on coming to support us!

Merry Christmas from the Hamilton!