Once we passed court on Oct 12 we had to wait for our judge to sign the decree and she took 3 weeks to do so! That was a long wait. Once the decree was signed we could apply for new birth certificates with our names as parents on them. Then the children were bussed, together with their foster father, to the city of Sofia to apply for passports and have their health checks for their Canadian permanent resident visas. They were in Sofia from Nov. 16-20 to complete this all. This was the very first trip they had ever gone on. The bus trip was 8 hours and they stayed in an apartment and got to go to a theatre and did a lot of walking in the parks of Sofia. They had a really good time. I think it was super that they could do this together with the foster father! We then waited for a week for the health results so that all the information could be sent to the Canadian embassy for processing. Now we knew that it could take up to three weeks for the visa processing but they could issue them at any time. So we were sitting on go, ready to pack our bags any day! Then after they told us not to contact them, they would contact us, we email them anyways and found out that they were waiting for the Province of Manitoba to issue them a "letter of no objection." Had we known this we would have gotten our agency to pester the province for 2 weeks already but once we notified our agency in Winnipeg that the Province was sitting on their hands about issuing this letter he started phoning and showing up at their office to get them to move. Then we found out that our agency from Bulgaria had only send the health letters to the Embassy and not the children's passports. AHHHH! So we got the embassy to let our Bulgarian agency know they should get the passports over to them ASAP. We knew we were so close to going and our travel agent had flight itineraries ready for us and we really wanted to book flights but our Bulgarian agency was getting upset and warning us not to book flights because the embassy could take a very long time to process the visas. We had been e-mailing with the embassy about time lines and they sounded positive but they never gave us any clear direction. We were seeking the Lord on how to go about this. The Bulgarian agency wanted us to wait until they had the passports with the visa in their hands before we booked tickets to fly but we knew if we listened to them we may only go in January to pick up the children. Eliana and Justus were asking everyday when we would come for them. It was painful to watch them waiting. They were taken out of school since their trip to Sofia so they had absolutely nothing to do except text with us! They started to stay up all night and sleep during their day so that they could converse with us. Our hearts were to ease theirs but there was nothing we could do and we did not have complete peace about booking our tickets. We felt we should wait until Manitoba had sent the document to the embassy. Once that happened we thought we were pretty safe to book. Understand that our agency in Bulgaria are control freaks and they believe we can hardly go to the bathroom with out them holding our hand. So to book tickets and make plans without their blessing is nearly beyond their scope of possibility. However we planned to just go to Bulgaria and wait for as long as we needed to get the visas and then come home. So we got a flight itinerary that would have us leaving Manitoba on December 16th returning on December 28th. We were reasonably positive that these dates would give us enough time. We planned to book a cheap apartment on the black sea that had hot springs beside it. It would be cost effective and give us some time to rest before the whirl wind of getting new kids. Sounded like a great plan! If everything went as smoothly as possible (we thought) we would spend the weekend on our own and get to pick up or at least see the children on Monday December 21. Then return to Canada on Christmas day. Our flights were being held for us until midnight on Monday Dec 14 at midnight. We watched the time come and go because we didn't have peace about it and we didn't have word from the province that they had completed their part of the work. We had our hopes up that we could book those flights because being so close to christmas the flights we going up in price by the day. However midnight came and went and we still had no flights booked and no idea when that would happen. I really can not put into words the up and down emotions that went into this time. I am not a very emotional person and when other adoptive parents lamented about the agony that they were in waiting to go get their children I whispered to myself, "I wouldn't be like that, when it happens it happens no big deal." Well I need to swallow a piece of humble pie! The up and down of the last month caused me to not be able to concentrate on anything, and there were times when I felt literal pain in my heart. There is no other way to describe it then difficult and heart wrenching.
So we had to pass on the itinerary that was on hold for us and wait longer. We did not tell our Bulgarian children any dates at this point. We waited through Tuesday with no word from the province or the embassy that they had received the documents. Travis and I drove to Winnipeg to pick up my repaired camera lens so that we would be ready to leave when we got the call. We prayed so much during these days and night and we know so many others were as well! Wednesday morning Travis woke up at 5:00 to start his day and had planned to email the embassy to see if the documents had arrived. To his delight there was an email from the embassy saying that they had received the document from the province and they were " ready to issue the visas as soon as they received the passports." He kindly waited until 6am to let me know that we were booking flights today, leaving as soon as there were flights available at a reasonable cost. So I wrote an email to our adoption travel agency and let him know that this was not "false labor!" This is the real deal. It took until 10:00 am for him to check all possible dates to come up with flights that work for adoption and the best price. I checked my email every 2 minutes wondering how much I needed to hurry or if I had lots of time. We were still open to travelling after or over Christmas if that gave us a good cost savings. We got the itinerary and our wonderful agent found us flights leaving the next morning at a lower price than our last itinerary had. We booked them right away and now I knew I needed to hurry! To be continued...
Mandy, I'm very excited for you! Can't wait to hear more from you! It is a wonderful thing to know that we are in the will of the Lord. Praying for safety and protection for all your children!
ReplyDeleteAnnie L.