Why we don't get too excited

Somebody was asking me about this "hiccup" in the citizenship process for the kids on Sunday and I told him that I'm not too worked up about the whole thing because we've already seen too many HUGE challenges overcome in this long battle. I told him that we were just waiting to find out how this situation would be resolved. And I think we've about got our answer.

Well, we went downtown a couple days ago to visit the USCIS office in St. Louis. Paid stinkin' 6 bucks to park. Went through the hassle of finding the building, going through the security checkpoint (it is a federal building), searching for the office, and dealing with the "friendly" neighborhood immigration services worker. Actually he wasn't mean or anything...just bland, cut-and-draw, black-and-white...you know.

After explaining our situation we found that we had another supporter. "Yes, it seems like a mistake has been made," he agreed. "Yeah, so what do we do about it," I thought. To silly 'ole me it seemed that a quick phone call would do the trick. Change a few lines here...add an address there...and VOILA!...citizenship. However, I've obviously never been trained in the art of the federal runaround...a tactic widely employed to strike fear in the hearts of citizens around the nation.

We left the office, irritated that we would have to send a letter (along with multiple copies of this and that document) to their Buffalo, NY office. Could we call? NO! Could we fax? No! Did it feel like we were back in Poland? YES!!

Enter GOOGLE. Oh, sweet google. After talking to my mom a bit, she had the idea to try to look up the director of the Buffalo office. And as it turns out we found her telephone number...a number which they supposedly hold very closely to their chests so that no schlep can call them out of the blue. Oh...but how I called! You can't hold this schlep down!!

Yesterday I had a few wonderful phone calls with the Buffalo office. Those people are great...nice, helpful, warm. It was incredible. And would you believe that after explaining the situation to them I was told I just needed to fax (yeah fax!) a couple supporting documents to them and they would get the kids' certificates of citizenship out to us within a few days!! Unreal!

Obviously we just had to find the open door. As is always the case it does take a little searching. Even when God is at work in our lives, there is an expectation that we will also be working. And it's also cool how we're here to help each other out, right?! In our frustration I know we wouldn't have thought about googling that lady. We would have written the stupid letters, made the copies, etc....and waited eternally for the government to respond. So, at the end of the day (proverbially) we have found ourselves with yet another spiritual lesson...one in a VERY long line of lessons!

Thanks for praying with us for resolution to another issue in this epic journey!