Passport to Nowhere

You know, in our world, when someone doesn't know something but is asked about it, the person often flippantly responds with "God only knows". I think in my entire life, I have never uttered this phrase. I try take seriously the holiness of God and try not to so easily dismiss Him. I can safely say, and with no casualness intended that God only knows when we might be given permission to travel.

I would love to post the email Maren received today from the director of the India program at our agency. Perhaps someday when our beloved little girl is at home, I might go back and edit this particular post to include the full text of the email. I want her to know about it. I want her to someday understand that we did everything we could to bring her home as soon as we could and that so much of the delay came down to shenanigans on the part of others.

In keeping with the norm for the past year, nothing is happening during the expected time frames. The latest hang-up is her passport. The passport was supposed to be issued within 10 days from the date of application. I have lost track as to where we are at this point, but it is right at about a month. The email we got today indicated we can probably expect to wait several weeks more or even longer. If I understood the email correctly, the problem essentially seems to be coming down to government employees attempting to make themselves look good by doing nothing. Yes, you read that correctly. Somehow or other, there seems to be some sort of twisted interpretation of self-pride that is keeping people from doing their job. Basically, if they don't do their job, they cannot do anything wrong. Only by doing one's job can one make a mistake, therefore, better to not do the job at all. Really. That is honestly the way it seems to come across. I want to be clear that I am talking about employees on the India side as the goverment employees on the U.S. side really have been quite accomodating and swift (child abuse checks aside).

This passport slow-down is affecting several different adoption agencies and families waiting to travel. The part that really gets my craw is that we are now her legal guardians. We are legally responsible for her. We have never met her. We would love to meet her. We want to bring her home. And yet, we can't go because they won't issue a passport for her. There is nothing that needs to be decided. There is nothing that needs to be investigated. There are no documents that need to be produced. Someone somewhere simply needs to take a funny little booklet, imprint her picture on it, slap some official lingo on it, and get it to her social workers in India. It is tough to be patient with that sort of thing. I can understand a mistake. I can understand a misplaced document. I honestly can't understand someone not even attempting their job. That is just flat wrong. It is made even more wrong when the life of an innocent little girl hangs in the balance.