Kenya

We arrived in Kenya last night and checked into the guest house...the only annoying part was that they brought us directly to a "bishop suite" which is twice as big as the standard room and we did not request it so it took a few minutes to get them to find us a standard room and thankfully they were able to because about an hour later Brock had gone down to the receptionist and there were a bunch of people trying to get a room and there weren't any...! We left here this morning at 7:15 to arrive at the Embassy at 8:00. We had to wait about an hour to speak with an immigration officer. When we sat down in the waiting area we were seated right next to the only other white person in the room. We began chatting and found out that she has been living in Kenya for 9 months with her 4 children waiting for her adoption (of her 5th child) to be finalized. She is adopting from Kenya and they require a 9 month residency. I thought 3 weeks was bad and this poor woman has been doing this for 9 months! Anyway she was a believer and was sooooo helpful. After we got our medical packet she said that we could use her cell phone to make an appointment. Then she invited us back to her house to wait for the doctors appointment because she lived right near the medical offices. We went and met her children who were all precious!
So today we got much accomplished. We got all the paperwork needed for the Embassy and had our medical appointment and also got his blood drawn for the HIV test (yes, he already had one but the embassy requires another by their "trusted" physicians). We need to go back on Wed. morning for JP to get a few more immunizations and to pick up the bloodwork results. Then we have our visa interview scheduled for Thursday morning at 8:00am. Soooo...it was a very productive day.
Here's the kicker though.....you knew it couldn't be that easy..right!!!
Well,the Embassy is closed 3 days next week for holidays! Another couple who is adopting was told this morning that they would probably not be able to pick up the visa until the week of the 15th. They are at the exact same place in the process as us and we found this out when we ran into them at the medical office. We are just going to have to pray that we can persuade them on Thursday to have it ready for us on Friday or at least one of the days they will be open next week. The website says that the visas are ready for pick up 24 hours after your interview but they are saying that it takes 3-4 working days. So I am going to print off the website page that says they are ready 24 hours later and just pray that God will go before us and work it all out in a way that doesn't have us sitting here for a week just waiting for a piece of paper. JP is doing great...and we are doing just fine too!