God Fights for the Orphan

 

 

It's Orphan Sunday today, and the story I'm about to tell couldn't have happened on a more fitting day!  It's a story that shows how much God really does stand up for orphans; how much He loves them and fights for them!  And how He uses His people to make things happen!

For those of you not on FB, here's a bit of an update since my last post.  I honestly thought that the story of our journey to Wren was mostly complete.  I was wrong!

Last night our church hosted a fundraising party to bring Wren home.  It was an emotional night, and we left the event encouraged and completely blown away by peoples generosity! 

There simply is no way to adequately express our gratitude!  But THANK YOU to Nate and Carla for organizing the event, to everyone who donated a silent auction item, to everyone who came, and to everyone who gave of your hard earned money! 

We are incredibly grateful to be surrounded by such an amazing group of prayer warriors, encouragers, and God loving people!

I actually managed to finally have a decent nights sleep.

I awoke feeling fairly well rested, ready to get my little family ready for church, meet friends for lunch, and have a more relaxing day.

That wasn't meant to be...but first a little of what's been happening the past couple of  weeks...
 

The past month has been an emotional roller coaster with documents sitting in some office, those same documents taking a week to get to their destination rather than 2 days, trying to contact immigration with no success and thinking we wouldn't be travelling to China in November, then it looking feasible because we managed to get Part I of Wren's citizenship expedited.  Well, last week Friday we finally booked flights to leave this coming Friday.

 

The only thing that still needs to fall into place is getting our visas.  The plan is for our contact in Toronto to apply for an expedited visa on Monday, get the visas on Wednesday, send them out via FedEx, expedited once again, and have the visas arrive in Saskatoon on Thursday morning.

 

Well, this morning I got the phone call I didn't want!

 

It turns out the guy applying for our visas forgot to mention that we should have 2 passport style photos included to affix to the visa application!  I had sent two photos to our agency, thinking they would be used for our visas, and didn't realize we needed 2 sets! 

 

Adrenalin kicked in, and we began praying and searching for a way to get these photos to Toronto by tomorrow morning.  For those of you not familiar with Canadian geography, Toronto is half way across the country! 

 

I called every single courier I could think of.  ALL are closed on Sunday!  The earliest any document could possibly arrive in Toronto would be Monday night or Tuesday morning!

 

That's where God comes in!

 

I posted an URGENT post, asking if anyone happened to be flying to Toronto today, or if anyone knew anyone flying there today.  Within minutes on of my FB friends posted the following and within minutes I got a response....

 

I seriously burst out balling!!  And I still cry every time I read this fb conversation!

 

We spent the morning and part of the afternoon trying to get the right size of photo to meet China's guidelines and after stopping at Costco and SGI, we finally hit the jackpot at London Drugs!  We got our photos done and they are now in the capable hands of Mark!

 

I am emotionally and physically exhausted!  We asked for God to show us His hand in this entire journey to Wren...and He continues to do so!

 

Please keep praying that everything falls into place perfectly...preferably without more drama and stress!