I must admit that at this point, I was a bit foggy on what we were doing next. That's because, of course....Really Important Man had just said YES! I didn't really care where we were going next! But very quickly, I began to understand what was happening.
Rim had said yes; it was cramazing news. But the catch was that he was mailing the passports in the regular mail. They were due to arrive at Basundhara (the orphanage) sometime the next afternoon. Overall, that was great, but the operative words were "due to" and "sometime". We had to do everything we could to be proactive and make sure that the postal system was working well. After all, our plane was set to leave at 7 p.m. the next evening, and Basundhara was an hour away from the airport...the timing was proving to be very tight!
So off we went in the taxi to our next stop: the central post office for all of Bhubaneswar. We walked in, looking for the one specific person--the postmaster general--who could possibly help us. The guards, looking warily at the foreigners walking into the local government building, pointed us to the 2nd floor (What would we have done were it not for Tuna?!) . No dice. Back to the lobby and to a directory of some sort. Fourth floor is what we wanted. Near-empty building. Hollow sounds. Marble steps. Cobwebs in the corners. Finally, the 4th floor and a look around. I remember thinking how in America, you would never find a 5-story building with no elevators.
Eventually, we found a door with the correct title displayed and a name under it. And this is where it gets cramazing...Tuna says, "There is an elder at my church with that name." Unfortunately, we had arrived during the lunch hour, which explained the near-complete desertion of the place. So, of course, we decided we would wait in the hallway...which we didn't have to do for long because before we knew it, here comes....Tuna's elder from church, the postmaster general!
In an instant, we went from praying and wondering and hoping......to praising and rejoicing and delighting. Not because the passports were in our hands, by any means, but because of God's obvious and great ability to orchestrate events.
Scott and I were given a great welcome, and our new friend was so pleased to hear that fellow Christians were adopting children from his country. He and Tuna spoke a good bit of back-and-forth banter in Oriya, but when it came to details of the passport, they spoke in English. "I can do nothing until Rim puts the passports in the mail. But once they are in the mail, I will do everything in my power to get them to you quickly!"
An arrangement was make for Tuna to call in the morning to check and make sure that the passports were in the mail. If so, they would be delivered to the Cuttack mail station in the morning, and we could then drive there and meet the mail courier to retrieve them.
It was a tenuous scenario, but we were in the best situation possible, all things considered. We had done all we could do and could do nothing more but wait 'til morning and see if Really Important Man did what he said he would do.
And pray. For after all, God was in control.
We thanked our new friend and headed back to the Ginger, and when we arrived, we found Hoffbeast with L, Rex, and Tom....and all of our luggage. Karen had needed to rest, so Hoffbeast was a champ (as usual) and was babysitting the luggage and entertaining the kids. Keep in mind, of course, that we had been hoping that we could leave that day, but it was not to be. So we again got rooms for the night and began lugging our things upstairs. We were thankful that this building had an elevator. :)
We we soooo hungry, so we grabbed some lunch and then spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out with our friends, taking a nap, and praising our God for what He was doing in our hearts and lives.
L and her mama
The Daddy and his boys
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