Appointments for all!...well, most...er, some

The NAC has started issing appointments! We know of a number of families who now have appointments in early March. Unfortunately for us, they are only issuing appointments to those families who were registered before the shutdown. And unfortunately for many of them, the NAC appears to be going in chronological order by when the dossiers were received. Since there are families who were registered last May(!) and the shutdown didn't occur until September, you might notice that there would be cause for a small bottleneck here. Okay, a rather large bottleneck. There are believed to be about 1000 families who were registered from May to September who did not receive appointments last year--plus the families who had appointments but did not find a child and are being invited to return. The basic idea of all of this is that it's probably going to be awhile before we're going to Ukraine...to put it mildly.

Yes, it's very frustrating. While we still believe that God has a plan and that it simply may not involve us going to Ukraine before autumn, it doesn't mean we're particularly thrilled with it. While I would love to say that we can be patient and wait, etc., etc.--which is true!--there are days it is really...really...hard. There are tears, there is frustration, there is anger over parents who beat their children, neglect them, poison them. Why would God give them such a precious gift when they don't appreciate what they have? Why do they have the opportunity to ruin their children's lives, when we don't have the opportunity to love them, cherish them, hold them?

Only God knows the answer, and I can't begin to wrap my feeble human brain around the plans He has. I know that when the plans we think are so wonderful fail, He has an even more marvelous plan that is beyond our comprehension. Even in my sadness and pain, I am excited to see what God has planned for us. It will be quite a journey.