The Fourth Country

Did we say this was a three-country adoption? Well, now it's officially a four-country adoption. Stan called Ceuta, Spain on Monday to talk with the scientific police about taking fingerprints. He told me they were "super nice" and had agreed to do my fingerprints. Praise God for Stan's good European Spanish accent. It seems to open doors for us in Spain.
Ceuta is a Spanish city on the African mainland. We are planning to drive there this weekend and get the fingerprints done early Monday morning. Fortunately, we still have the U.S. fingerprint cards that we picked up in Casablanca in December.
At the same time we were trying to work out plans to get another set of prints taken, we were communicating with our social worker in Germany. She had one additional set of prints that we had done in Indiana in January. She went ahead and forwarded them on to Rome. If that set is readable, then the US application can move forward before we get this Spanish set to Rome.
Someone asked me recently why we were sending papers to Rome. Since the US application is technically a pre-authorization for the immigration of our adopted children, the paperwork goes through Immigration Services. Rome's US Consulate is in charge of immigration to the US for this area of the world. If we were residing in the US, we would be filing our paperwork with a US Center for Immigration Services in a US city.
So does Italy and Germany make it a five-country adoption ? No, I think you have to either travel to that country and/or deal with their bureaucracy for it to count. Our dealings with Rome and Germany are all still inside the US system.
Even if we only had one country to deal with, we know there are still so many details that are out of our control. We also know the outcome is firmly in the hands of God. Thanks so much for your prayers; they open doors that even a good Spanish accent can't!