Today has been quite the ride, full of all sorts of ups and downs and twists and turns, and it’s only 2pm. Let me start off by saying what a great day we had yesterday. We got to Vancouver just in time to have lunch, so we parked a block away from the Embassy which happened to be right next to an A&W. We had lunch and then went to the Embassy, which was a very small office (one room with no chairs and just one lady helping people). She gave us the form we needed with an instruction sheet. She didn’t even ask us where we were from. They don’t do the fingerprints at that office and she told us we didn’t need to get it notarized or authenticated or any of that. I guess they do things different in Canada. We found the International Fingerprinting office, which was just a block away, and got the fingerprints done. The instruction sheet said to get a certified check from the Royal Bank of Canada, because Manila has had problems with other banks which would cause our application to be delayed, so of course we went in search of the RBC. We were able to find one just a couple of blocks away. We ended up having to pay them $15 for a $4 check, but oh well, I think it will be worth it. Since we had everything done we decided to try to find a post office to get it mailed off and have everything finished. We found one just across from the Embassy. We were able to get everything taken care of all within a 2 block radius and all within 2 hours. The Lord was definitely on our side today. Now we just have to wait to get it back in 3-4 weeks. It felt so good to know we had everything done, finally. I felt so happy and relived for the first time in months. We had a great time in Canada while we were there. I will write more about that on our other blog and include some pictures.
Well, that was yesterday. Today is a whole different story. I decided to email our social worker to find out the status of our home study, since it has been a couple of weeks since we submitted it. I also emailed Wide Horizons to find out if the USCIS was still requiring the NBI or not, so I would know if we should submit our home study and I800a now or wait until we got our NBI clearance back.
I got an email back from Wide Horizons saying that the USCIS is still requiring additional information from 100% of all applications received. Crazy! They still haven’t come out with clear guidelines of what they want from the home study, but should be coming out with something soon to make the process go more smoothly. Now that’s the government for you. Way to implement a brand new program without having it all figured out first. Anyway, she said that we should go ahead and submit our home study because they are still arranging appointments to get fingerprinted and by the time we get that done they should know better what we need. It still seems pretty confusing to me, but I was happy that we could move on with the process while they continue to not know what the heck is going on.
Then I got an email back from our social worker and all of my hopes and happiness from the previous email was dashed to pieces. She was waiting for our home study to be approved by the agency’s main office and just found out today that we need to have our medicals redone because they are over 6 months old. I don’t know why she didn’t think of this before, but like I mentioned before, I don’t think she has ever had a home study take this long and just didn’t think about it. I just wanted to cry when I read that. In order for us to have those done we needed to schedule physicals for each of us. Me, Jason, and both girls.
I called Jason to let him know, I figured I might as well ruin his day too and we could be miserable together. He told me he would call the doctor and figure out what we should do. He then called me back to let me know that he found out that our insurance only covers 1 physical a year for each of us and if we had to have another one done it would be $200 out of our own pockets(and we were worried about having to pay all the co-pays again). That would be $800 for all of us. Not gonna happen. He said he was waiting for our doctor to call him back so he could find out if we could just bring him the forms, without making an appointment, and have him just fill out the forms again exactly the same but with the current date. I was so depressed at this point and praying for a miracle.
Jason called me back after talking with our doctor and said that he was willing to do it without an appointment. “Thank You God!” is all I can say. I feel so blessed and so relieved for this. In the end, I always know the Lord is on our side, because everything always works out. It is just not always fun getting to that point. I just keep wondering what is coming next. There is always something. I feel like I am on a never-ending roller coaster and I just want to get off but I can’t. Especially after that dream I had. I know I can’t give up. Maybe that is why the Lord blessed me with such an incredible dream, so on days like today, when I am at the end of my rope, I can look back and remember the peace and love that I felt and know that it is all going to be worth it in the end. Our children must be pretty special to have all the powers of hell working against us in bringing them home. Lucky for us we also have all the powers of heaven with us and they are mightier, so I know they will make it home. It will just be quite a long and crazy journey getting to that point.
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