Yesterday afternoon our passports arrived in the mail... and sat in the mailbox for the next 7 hours! Yesterday was the first day we haven't heard the mail truck enter the neighborhood and then watch it drive around the streets until it came to our mailbox. We left the house just before mail time to visit Nico's cousin for dinner and go trick-or-treating in their neighborhood with her son, close to Moses' age. She lives close to an hour away, so we returned home at 10pm to tuck kids in bed, put the house back in order, and... check the mail!
Nico ripped open the self-addressed-special-flat-rate-priority-mail-express-envelope and I dumped the contents on the table: 3 US passports, nothing else. No note, no letter, nothing. This was actually at least a little encouraging, because the first time there was a note to tell us why we were denied. No note, no denial? We flipped through the passports and there in each one was a shiny, fancy visa sticker for October 27th, 2017 through October 27th 2018, one full year!!!
I can't tell you how joyful this was. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Our waiting was over!!! We thanked God that we had an answer and that the answer was yes! We double and triple checked the visa sticker to make sure it was still existing in each passport and re-analyzed the dates of approval! We called a handful of people that wouldn't mind hearing this big news at 10:30pm and later! We will never celebrate Halloween the same! :)
My mom pointed out that we received our answer exactly four months, to the day, from when we left our house in Harrisonburg. A few days before receiving our visa, I was given God's perspective on our wait. We have been so blessed in the past four months. True joys and spiritual growth in the midst of the difficulty of not knowing what will happen or when anything will happen; to be in limbo for what has felt like ages. We thought our visas would arrive by the beginning of August, and between the beginning of August and receiving the visas yesterday, our faith has been stretched and deepened. And as we move forward and make plans to leave (in a week or so) we're already beginning to forget how hard it has felt to be waiting.
To everyone: you have prayed for us and supported us in so many ways! Thank you!!!
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