This afternoon, in answer to many prayers, we were able to get Mikaela’s U.S. immigrant visa, which means that we are clear to fly home tomorrow morning! We have been praying all week that we would make our return flight, scheduled to leave Kyiv tomorrow at 11:05 a.m. and arrive in New York some ten-and-a-half hours later, and we weren’t sure that it was going to happen. With everything that happened surrounding Mikaela’s passport and the possibility of missing our train yesterday, we weren’t going to rest easy until we had her visa in our possession. If we had gotten her passport on Tuesday as we had originally thought we would, then we would have had no problem obtaining the visa in time for our return flights. Had things played out that way, we would have come to Kyiv on Wednesday to have Mikaela’s medical exam and initial interview at the U.S. Embassy, and we would have returned to the Embassy the next day to pick up her visa. Since we had to wait an extra day to get her passport, however, that meant that if we were to make our plane on Friday morning, we would have to fulfill all of our U.S. Embassy requirements and get her passport, all in the same day. Yet again, God showed that He knew our need ahead of time and graciously saw us through it.

The general policy of the U.S. Embassy here is that it takes two days to obtain an immigrant visa. On the first day, the child’s medical exam is done and the medical report, along with some other paperwork, is submitted to the officials at the Embassy. Then, another appointment is made for the following day, when the adoptive parents may return to pick up the visa. Sometimes they choose to make an exception and will process everything in one day, and they thankfully agreed to do that with Mikaela’s case. We knew that this was not something that we could expect from the Embassy; they would have had every right to deny that request and to insist on taking two days to process Mikaela’s paperwork, which would have meant another change to our return flights. So, when they agreed to expedite her case, we were thrilled and very thankful, but then we learned something which made us even more grateful. Beginning this coming Tuesday, July 6, the U.S. Embassy will no longer be making such exceptions. They will require that every adoptive family make two appointments, typically on consecutive days, to obtain an immigrant visa for an adoptive child. No exceptions. So, we came very close to missing the window for being able to get everything done in a single day like this, and we are praising the Lord tonight for the timing of all of this. We are sad that families in situations like ours will not have the option of an expedited case such as we were blessed with today, and that makes us all the more thankful that God would move so graciously for us. We wanted to go home tomorrow very much, but we knew that if He wanted us to remain here a day or so longer, then that would be best for us, even if it meant having to pay an additional fee to change our airline reservations a second time. After all that He had done for us on this trip, and after He moved us through Mikaela’s adoption with incredible speed—even with a handful of short delays along the way, we are flying out of Ukraine less than six weeks after arriving here, which is somewhat shorter than the usual stay, and we are taking our daughter home six months to the day that we first saw her picture and knew that she was ours, an incredibly fast international adoption—how could we complain about having to stay longer than we wanted? This is not about what we want, but about following the Lord as He leads us, and it’s about bringing Mikaela home with us, her family. Any considerations of comfort or preference must fall in line behind these.

So, we are heading home tomorrow, and yet there is one more potential concern facing us as we venture home to Cincinnati. Our layover in New York is two-and-a-half hours, which might be enough time for us to get through immigration and make our connecting flight, but it might not be. I do not want to get stuck in New York tomorrow night and have to wait another day to get home. But, I know that I must trust God with the timing of all of this. He has been so gracious and loving towards us in this whole process that it would be foolish and selfish of us to complain at this point. We are still praying that we will make it through immigration in New York in enough time to make our connecting flight to Cincinnati, but we are trying at the same time to have our wills align with His. We don’t yet know what He has in store for us on the way home, but we know that we are leaving with our family intact, and for that, we give Him praise, honor, and glory. In the end, what really matters is that by following Him, we return home with our whole family (and, of course, return Meghan to her family). That is what we wanted when we set out from home forty days ago, and that is what we want now, as well.