Expecting to travel to Africa in about 3 weeks!!!!!!!

We have very hopeful and exciting news to report!!!!!  We have dropped our agency and hired an local attorney on the ground in Goma.  He has been moving VERY fast, praise God, to get Nicodemu and Anouarite to safety and to their new family!  After much prayer and deliberation, we have made the big jump and we are THRILLED.  The Cummings family, see previous posts, switched to him about 3-4 weeks ago after all the fighting broke out and they were scrambling to do better than the process we have been stuck in.  They are now in the Congo, having been already united with their 3 children on December 27th!  There is a lot more to discuss here about why this attorney is able to move SO much faster than our other attorney who is hired by the agency, but that would take a whole book so I will spare you all for now.  It is a very interesting and fascinating study though into Congolese culture and how we can and should "fit" into their system.

We have been in constant contact with our new attorney and we know that the judge is working on our final adoption judgement!  We hope to get a call in about 2 weeks that our judgement is complete and that we can book our flights!  As soon as we get the final judgment, they will be legally ours, and we can post their pictures for you.  (or I guess we could now since we are no longer with our agency, but we think we will wait until we know for sure that they are OURS!)

Please continue to pray that the fighting does not resume!!  Chuck and I plan to go into Goma around the 3rd week of January as long as there is still peace.  If fighting resumes again, the airport will likely close, and we don't know how we will get them out as the Congo is impassable by car.  So, time is of the essence. 

Thank you all for taking this journey with us and we will keep you posted!

Imminent Fighting Again

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/world/africa/troops-mass-in-fought-over-city-raising-fear-of-new-violence-in-congo.html?_r=0

Troops are massing and drawing very very near.  It could all explode at any minute.  Please keep praying.  Though I can not give any details here yet, we were told by our attorney to stand by in hopes of the possibility of an immediate plan of action.  Why are they not yet on that humanitarian flight?!  Will there ever be the promised humanitarian flight?  God is in control and he loves us and them.  I still believe God will bring them home against all odds.  Please pray with us.

Friends, I wish we had more to report at this time.

We do know that our case is still being considered.  Still praying for their swift deliverance.

We are very disappointed to report that the children are all still in Goma.  No flight has yet come for them.  We are tying to dig for answers for this as well.  We are learning the depth of the brokenness of the system that has crippled their country and orphaned millions of children.  As we share in the sufferings of Christ and reach out to love these children, we are acquiring scars of our own.  I never thought it would be this hard.  But these scars are not bleeding wounds, they are quickly mended and carefully attended to by our own Father.  We have the promise in James 1 that our sufferings and the testing of our faith produce steadfastness.  And that steadfastness will have its full effect, that we may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.  So we wrestle to count it all joy.

Thank you for checking in and for your faithful support and prayers!  God is bigger than all of this.  I think we are in the part of the footprints poem when there was only one set of footprints in the sand.

Humanitarian Flight Approved!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today, we finally heard that our children and the other 5 children being adopted to the US have been granted the next humanitarian flight out of Goma!  To back up a few days, a UN representative and Immigration Official last Friday/Saturday came to visit the orphanage, interviewed the orphanage director, and each of our children  one by one.  He told them when he left that he would be back for them as soon as possible.  I heard from Gilbert this afternoon that the children have been asking every minute when they get to fly in the airplane!  At this point I don't know that they even understand that this is possibly sparing their lives or that they will be coming to see us, they are just so excited about flying on an airplane!!  I love that childlike simplicity.  I don't think they have been outside of those orphanage walls for approximately 3 years.  They even washed their clothes and have been ready to go for days and are sad as yet another day comes to an end with no one coming to get them.

At about 4:00 this afternoon we learned that the Immigration Official had made it back to Kinshasa (after other humanitarian stops), spoke with our attorney in Congo, and they are now filing the necessary paperwork to get them on the next humanitarian flight.  We do not yet know when the next flight will be but our agency will be checking in with them daily.

Please pray that the flight comes before any new fighting erupts.  So far M23 has withdrawn from Goma and is waiting just a couple miles outside for negotiations.  They have already stated their intentions to "re-take" Goma militarily if negotiations do not occur on their timeline.  There have been no signs of negotiations beginning yet.  As this is all brand new news, we don't yet know what will happen from here once they are in Kinshasa.  We are still praying for a second miracle of humanitarian parole.  Otherwise, the children will have to wait in Kinshasa for the remainder of the legal proceedings to take place (we hope) from Kinshasa.  But much thanks to our mighty God that they will wait in a safer place.  Pray that the flight comes SOON!  Pray for their safe flight across country as this will be a little "puddle jumper plane" I am sure!  And please pray for all of the children and the entire community left behind in this humanitarian crisis.