Our return to Malawi has been a long time coming. It hasn't been due to an unwillingness to return. The biggest hurdle has been Bridget's citizenship. She was officially adopted in Malawi but not a US citizen. We started the paperwork before we left in Aug. 2007 and it took over a year to be approved. Normally, it takes 3-4 months for approval.
You have to return to the originating country to finalize the process for an I-600. We tried to return two different times but were stopped due to complications. Since it took over a year to be approved her visitor's visa had expired. When we tried to board our plane in Seattle they told us that London would not allow her to even change planes since she had an expired visa. They took our luggage off the plane and we had to go home and regroup. Two months later we tried again but this time we would avoid London and fly through Johannesburg. Two days before we were to leave, the US Embassy in Malawi told us that our fingerprints had expired. FYI, fingerprints are only good for 15 months as you may have committed a crime and they need to check again. After some scrambling, we decided to not go.
There is another process for citizenship with an adopted child and that is to wait for two years so you can prove that you really are their parent and that is what we opted to do. She was still here on an expired visa but that didn't seem to be a problem. Her citizenship was approved in January of this year so that gave us the ability to travel out of the country.
Even though we can travel out of the country, Andy wasn't convinced that we needed to return. Taking a family this size to Africa is not a cheap prospect. He didn't want to return just to say hello to the nursery but wanted it to have a purpose and include our whole family. It was time to pray for God to guide us and show us His will in this endeavor. Obviously, He did.
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