8 months to give thanks

Our new baby girl, Elisabeth, is 3 weeks old today. When she was 6 days old we submitted her passport application. (We were quite the spectacle trying to get a week old baby to open her eyes in front of a white screen for a passport photo. The staff at Harold's Photo are probably still telling the story.) We went to the post office in Brookings (rather than the "big city" of Sioux Falls) and one of the clerks (Lowell, armed with small town helpfulness) let us go through the passport application process even though it was later than the posted time for accepting applications (and we'd like to thank everyone in the line that formed after we began for their patience). Just 13 days later we received her passport in the mail. That's fast.

Here's what remains in the paperwork process before we can board a plane bound for Belgium. In their haste the bureaucrats forgot to return Elisabeth's birth certificate with her passport. So we need to
1. Get another birth certificate for Elisabeth.
2. Get an apostille (a special seal that makes a document "more legal") from the South Dakota Secretary of State.
3. Wait for the arrival of my religious worker's visa.
4. Submit the family reunification visa application (connecting my family to the visa for which we currently wait).
5. Wait again (and this part should only take a few weeks as it gets processed in New York).

We have been waiting three days short of three months. That is significant because a representative at the consulate told us the visa would take 2-3 months (to the American mind that's slow). She has three days to be a woman of her word. Before that we waited five months for a paper needed to start our visa application process to arrive from Belgium (to that same American mind that's slow, too). So we're at the eight month mark.

Eight months of waiting, and still some waiting to do. For my mental and spiritual health I'm going to offer a list of eight things that cause me to be thankful for the wait.
1. We had our baby in Brookings (bucking the trend of Brookings people coming to Sioux Falls to have their babies) with doctors and nurses we've come to love and respect through the births of our other three kids.
2. We got to spend another Thanksgiving and Christmas with our families.
3. I have been able to speak, lead a Bible study, and participate in prayer ministry at several InterVarsity conferences and campuses.
4. My kids have had some really great birthday parties getting one more chance to invite friends and cousins.
5. I'm starting a men's discipleship group with some of my friends.
6. We were able to secure a beautiful home in Gent and friends over there (including some we've yet to meet) are filling it with things it takes to run a household.
7. God is using Sunday worship services at the church we're now attending to challenge us and give us his peace.
8. My son get's to participate in another season of Junior Bible Quiz.

Life lesson: God has instructed his children this way: "in everything give thanks; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." (1 Thessalonians 5:18) I guess everything includes paperwork and bureaucracy.