PAIR Letter? Check!!

Hello friends!

 

Well, good news! We were submitted to court on Friday! Our agency went ahead and submitted us without our PAIR letter since they knew we’d get it in the next day or so.

 

And guess what was in the mailbox on Friday afternoon? You guessed it. Our letter. This gives up preliminary approval for Bertie to migrate to the US and become a citizen. 

I dropped it in the mail to our agency yesterday afternoon. They will get it authenticated and sent to Ethiopia for our court file. 

 

Per our agency, court has been a little backed up lately, but they hope to get us a birth relative court date within the next 1-4 weeks. We’re praying hard that it’s sooner. We’re quickly approaching the court closures for the rainy season.

 

As soon as we the court date has been completed, we’ll be waiting on a recommendation letter from the Ministry of Women, Children, and Youth Affairs (MOWCYA). As soon as the team has that letter, we’ll be submitted for a court date. Those will generally come within 1-3 weeks!

 

Please continue to pray for us. We still aren’t where we need to be financially due to crazy airfare prices doubling for the summer season. We had planned to save at least 6,500 by the end of June – and we’re there. But after running numbers for each of our 3 travel options (2 trips, up to a 4 week trip, or up to a 6 week trip), we realized we’d need almost double. This was not poor planning on our part. We continued to check airfare all throughout the spring. And it hovered around 1100-1600 per ticket.

 

When we looked earlier this month, we had definitely had sticker shock. KC and I are not big travelers, so we didn't realize what the summer months will do to ticket prices. Haha!

Apparently, the summer airfare hike is hitting many adoptive families hard. We're all scrambling for any help we can get, and most organizations are just out of funds at this point. 

 

We’re budgeting as best as we can for the next month to allow for us to add extra to our travel savings account. Even with all the uncertainty, we’re not stressing out too bad because we’ve prayed continually for His guidance on this. We’re oddly at peace and we know that He will meet us where we are. We know that’s from Him because we should not be this calm at this point. Haha!

 

I’m thankful for His presence to help calm my spirit when the things of this world try to steal my joy. We are blessed in more ways than we realize, and I try to dwell on those things instead.  :)

Soon. It'll all be over soon. ❤️