Please Pray for Progress

Over the past month or so, God has opened doors for us in the legal system of Guatemala, and He has provided a person of influence there who has a heart for kids and stands ready to help us. Unfortunately, he has no influence over the US end of things, and until we have Pre-Approval from the US Embassy, we can not move forward.

Pre-Approval is a process that is typically initiated as soon as an adoptive family's paperwork arrives in Guatemala, which was October for us. Somehow, this was overlooked by our agency and our attorneys, and in March, the PGN listed the lack of Pre-Approval as one of the reasons our cases could not move forward. For reasons we still do not know, and despite the many times we asked about it, the Pre-Approval process still was not initiated until sometime in May. Our agency has assured us that the ball is rolling, that they are knowledgeable about the embassy process, and that our concerns are not valid and even offensive to them.

As I mentioned in the post I wrote after our meeting with our agency three weeks ago, it was our hope and prayer that time would prove that they were being truthful with us. We have no desire to be right in this situation...we would love to be wrong! If we learned that all of our concerns were unfounded and that everything had been done as we'd been told, we would have been ecstatic! But, much to our disappointment, the last few weeks have only proven that we had not, and still have not, been submitted for pre-approval. The documents we were promised three weeks ago have yet to appear. Even worse, during our meeting three weeks ago, we presented a list of required documents that we had obtained from the Embassy ourselves, and our agency asked us for a copy of it! We asked specifically about some of these documents, were told that they were already done, and then just last week, we received a phone call asking us to come into the office and sign these same documents!

To top it all off, we were given copies of sensitive court documents about Israel back in March that had not been translated into English. I spent two hours that day learning the unhappy details of my son's history by reading what I could and using a free online translator to translate the rest, phrase by phrase. When we were shown these same reports during our meeting three weeks ago, I mentioned that I had already read them after translating them myself, and I said how difficult that was for me. Then, last week, when we got the phone call asking us to come in and sign other paperwork, our agency asked me to provide them with my translations! I should never have been given these kinds of reports in another language and left to learn the kinds of things that I learned completely on my own in the first place. At the time, we were floored by the lack of sensitivity shown by our agency in dropping this kind of information in our laps with no explanation or support from them. So to be asked now to provide them with written translations just adds insult to injury. We assume that the Embassy is asking for these translations, as documents in Spanish are not likely to be accepted by a US government office, and we feel that it is completely inappropriate that our agency is asking the adoptive family to provide these translations.

As of today, we still have not been submitted for pre-approval. We do not know what more needs to be done, and we don't know whether our agency is clear on the requirements. We understand that people are working on it, but we continue to pray for efficiency, wisdom and integrity for all of our agency staff and our attorneys as they work. And we pray that, once submitted, the Lord will provide a way for our pre-approval to be granted far sooner than the 60 days the Embassy allows. We pray also that the way we handle all of this will bring glory to God. And mostly, we pray that we will move through every remaining step quickly so that we can bring Israel home...we are all anxious to have him here with us, and my heart is continuously burdened with the weight of missing him.

I know I've shared a lot of unpleasant details here, but we are sharing our journey on this blog, and while sometimes the journey is smooth and the views are spectacular, there are other times when the journey takes us through a muddy swamp. We will share it all, good or bad, because the difficult parts give us all the more cause for celebration when we finally do reach our destination. We also want you to know exactly where we are right now so you can help us pray through it and out of it. We covet your prayers tremendously because we know that only the power of God can overcome the obstacles that are in front of us. We pray on and press on...

God Answers Prayers!

In our last post, we shared two big prayer requests: Kaylee's medical tests and our ongoing adventure in Guatemala. We are very happy to share that the Lord has answered our prayers in unexpected and wonderful ways. We have been reminded once again that He is faithful and that there is tremendous power in prayer, and we are so thankful to have so many people praying so faithfully for our family. So, here's the latest:

Last Wednesday, Kaylee underwent a procedure called a sigmoidoscopy. The preparation for the procedure and the procedure itself are not pleasant experiences, and for the sake of everyone reading this, I will spare the details. During the procedure, the doctor found a pretty large polyp on the inside of Kaylee's intestine, which he removed. The doctor felt that it was most likely benign, but sent it to the lab to make sure. We were thankful that the Lord sustained us through that day and that His presence with Kaylee was apparent from the way she handled it all, but we've been waiting with a bit of dread for the past week for the lab results. We found out today that the lab work came back clear! Yay! We are so thankful that God has heard our prayers for Kaylee and blessed us with these good results!

God has also been answering our prayers over the process in Guatemala. We've been praying that the Lord will give us and the Mahoneys wisdom and direction for every step, and He has been so faithful to give us exactly the guidance we need. In addition to allowing us to confirm some of the details of where our case has been and where it is now, He has opened doors and put people in place to move our case much faster than we expected just a few weeks ago. In what appeared to be impossible circumstances, God has intervened and we give the glory to Him alone!

Of course, there are still many obstacles to overcome, and we continue to rely on your prayers. Even with the progress we've seen, the situation with the US Embassy in Guatemala is crucial to moving forward. Please pray that our cases will finally be submitted for pre-approval with all of the necessary paperwork in place, and that the Lord will provide a person in the Embassy whose heart will be moved by God to expedite the processing of our application. Pray for God to part the sea of red tape that is still before us, and to enable our agency, their staff, and our attorneys to work with wisdom, efficiency and integrity. We've shared before some of our concerns about the way our cases have been handled and whether we are being given accurate information, and those concerns remain. Please pray that the Lord will continue to give us wisdom so that, as we move forward, our words, actions and decisions will glorify Him.

I went to biblegateway.com to look for a verse that sums up the past week, and the verse of the day today was exactly what I was looking for...

“Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, O LORD, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all.” 1 Chronicles 29:11