Frustrated...

I thought I would share what is going on. We have to get fingerprinted for the US Citizen and Immigration Services (CIS) as part of our adoption paperwork. Fingerprints are only "good" for 15 months (don't ask me why) with the CIS. Our fingerprints expire with CIS on 10/7.  So why is this a big deal...well we have to have current fingerprints in order to bring Solomon home. We leave on 10/15 for our court date in Ethiopia.

I sent a request to get an appointment to be re-fingerprinted back in August (it was back to the paperchase days of checking the mailbox every day to see if our appointment letter was here). Well we still do not have an appointment. AHHH!!!!  Last week I started getting really nervous that this was going to set us back and that we would have to come back from Ethiopia without Solomon (my plan is to stay until we bring him home). So I tried to contact our local CIS office in Charlotte to see if they could help (this is where we go to get fingerprinted)..well let me tell you that this can not be done. Their phone number is disconnected and their email no longer works. It tells you that you need to call the CIS national benefits center (NBC) or email them (having to wait 2 business days for them to respond). So I tried calling them and the person on the line didn't understand what I was talking about and told me that all adoption information needed to be sent by email to the NBC. So I emailed telling them my situation and seeing if someone could help get us an appointment to be re-fingerprinted before we left for Ethiopia. I waited my 2 days for someone to respond and this person was not very helpful...telling me I needed a SIM number for her to access my file. I don't know that I have a SIM number. So I went through all of the millions of adoption paperwork that we have to see if there was a SIM number on something..never found it.

So I remember reading about another families struggles with fingerprints and decided to contact our Senator's office as they suggested. They also told me I needed to email someone with their office (still haven't heard back from them). So I emailed the NBC again hoping for someone else to help me and a nice woman was able to tell me that our file is in the computer system and she should know our appointment time tomorrow and would we like to email her tomorrow to find out our appointment date..YES!!! (not sure why the first lady I emailed couldn't tell me this) I am so nervous. I so want an appointment before we leave for Ethiopia and there is a small chance that it could happen.  If for some reason our appointment is set for after we leave I will be calling the senators office non stop to see if they can help give us an earlier time.

So that is a lot of rambling and probably doesn't make much sense. The important thing to remember is to Please Pray that our appointment is before we leave on 10/15 and that the fingerprints make it in time to Ethiopia so that we can bring Solomon home quickly.