The Significance of Fingerprints

Fall has arrived in Bangladesh! For the past two days we've had rain with temperatures in the low 80's/high 70's! This has caused an increase in traffic resulting in classes being canceled today at Someira's university. Also, everyone is bundling up-wearing long sleeves and slippers in the house. A neighbor brought by her grandson who is Kalina's age. He was dressed in winter clothing-long pants and a long sleeved shirt. For us, we're doing a happy dance not to be sweating all day! They asked us if we want a heavy quilt for our bed. I'm sure you can guess what we answered!
Hasan's parents are back, and his mom is recovering nicely from her surgery. Thank you for continuing to pray for this kind family.
Many have asked when we're coming home. We don't know. As soon as we get Kalina's visa we'll come! The obstacles in our journey have all centered around fingerprints. Nadeem and I were totally new to the adoption process, and there are no adoption agencies that work in Bangladesh, so we trusted God to guide us and open doors.
The US process for adopting a child domestically or internationally is really tough. We had to have medical exams, a home inspection, repeated interviews with an accredited agency, six written references, mounds of paperwork-and fingerprints. This is where our trouble first started. For the home study you must have fingerprints taken. We were under a tight time frame, but our attorney and an accredited agency told us we could be approved in time, not to worry, just to work fast. We did! We got everything completed, including the fingerprints. Then we waited for the fingerprints to be approved....and waited....and waited...as time ticked by, closer and closer to our departure date. Everything else was set. Nadeem kept calling the agency to find out what the problem was. After much conversation back and forth between the agency who does the home study and the government agency who processes the fingerprints, we were told that Nadeem's fingerprints were lost. We thought this was odd because they were taken on what's called a live scan, which means that the computer reads your fingerprints and electronically transmits them for processing immediately. How could they be lost, especially if mine weren't? We asked if Nadeem should have them taken again. We had more back and forth conversations included a heated conversation with the employee who took the fingerprints who got angry that we said they were lost and hung up the phone in a huff. You can't just walk in and have fingerprints taken. You must have an appointment. While we tried to deal with this situation, the agency called to say that actually the fingerprints weren't lost. Instead what they meant to say was that there was a problem processing them because of Nadeem's amputated fingers on his left hand. This has never been a problem before. He even became a US citizen with fingerprints taken excluding his missing fingers. We asked them to please reconsider or allow us to do the prints again. Meanwhile, time ticked on. We had to have these fingerprints approved before we could file the I600A, the official form asking if we could be adoptive parents in the US. We needed this done before we left. Both the lawyer's aid and the agency told us we couldn't file without the fingerprints being approved by the FBI. I want to also share that we already had obtained state of Georgia clearance-in one day. At the last moment, our friend who recently adopted from Russia told Nadeem that you don't have to have FBI clearance in order to file the paperwork. Nadeem talked to the lawyer's aid and agency who agreed that this was indeed true. They then completed the initial requirements allowing us to file the I600A.
Yet again we dealt with fingerprints. Can you believe that you must have your fingerprints taken yet again for the I600A process? The governmental departments are separate and don't share with each other. We asked many to pray for us, that we could get the fingerprints done before leaving. The lawyer's aid told us we could probably beg for mercy. We drove near downtown to beg. They wouldn't budge. All we needed was a sheet saying we had filed our application so that we could get our fingerprints taken. We had sent the application by FedEx. They refused, even though we tracked it and knew it was there. We really didn't know what to do. We kept thinking God would surely make a way. We even waited in the office for a while hoping that someone compassionate would help us. Nobody did.
The next day we were due to depart for Bangladesh. We were told not to leave without having the fingerprints taken. We prayed and felt certain that God told us to go. Let me tell you that we were scared and didn't want to go, but we knew this was God's plan all along and not ours, so we obeyed, knowing God had power to help us.
Can you believe that we then got Nadeem's approved fingerprints from the first round? Also the very next day, the day that we left, the governmental department mailed us the form we had begged for the previous day.
Then of course we arrived in Bangladesh with no fingerprint approval. This is when we were originally told repeatedly both by the US Embassy here and the people at home that we had no choice but to leave Kalina here, fly home, have our fingerprints taken, wait for approval, and then fly back. We knew that wasn't God's plan. Sure enough, if you've followed our blog, you know that at last we were able to have our fingerprints taken here. This has never happened in Bangladesh for adoptions. They don't even have the equipment, so our prints were taken on cards, not on the computer. Charles Spry from Senator Isakson's office said that it has been years since his seasoned colleague has seen anything like this.
Now we've learned that our fingerprints have reached their final destination-the processing site in Texas. We're waiting still for approval. The government department hasn't answered any of our calls or emails. We're enormously thankful to the senator's offices for helping us! They have promised to keep us updated. We believe the approval can come any day now. Please keep praying!
It is amazing and frustrating to see the series of mishaps and mess-ups all centered around fingerprints. It's also a bit confusing to us. God could have easily fixed all of this at the beginning of our journey instead of allowing us to stay here for so long. We've seen His hand on our adoption journey over and over. Why not with the fingerprints?
I follow a beautiful blog written by a hero of mine, Adam Tyson. I don't know him personally, but I see his strong faith in his writings, and I've heard him share his story-on my birthday, in fact. His three year old son is in need of God's healing. They've already seen many miracles. Adam adores his son and shares about their experiences and his faith walk. In his recent posting, he kept talking about God's fingerprints. Of course that word caught my eye-fingerprints! At first I thought it meant literal fingerprints. We think about fingerprints a lot, as you can imagine! However, he was talking about signs of God in his life. If you look, you can find them. If not, you might miss them. This really made me think. I believe that our story is about far more than fingerprints in the natural. I pondered what fingerprints are. For us, they'll tell that we're not criminals. Past that, fingerprints are your unique mark, your identification, the way of telling where you've been and what you've done. I believe this adoption journey is filled with the fingerprints of God. He's also allowing us to leave fingerprints-in the lives of the people we meet in Bangladesh, in Kalina's life, and in your lives. I still have way more questions than I have answers. Like all of you, I'd love to know when we're coming home! We don't know, but we do know that God has us in the palm of His hand. I pray that we all see His fingerprints in a fresh, new way.