'the letter'

We received Lutheran’s renewed license on Wednesday. It is good now for FOUR years! We also decided to go ahead and get our fingerprints redone for the FBI and State clearances. These are only good for 6 months. We won’t send for the state clearances until we actually have travel dates for trip 1 but we felt it wouldn’t hurt to get the FBI ones sent out. Last time it took 12 weeks to get the clearances back and some people were waiting 16 weeks - plus we have no idea how the holidays will impact processing time.

So now to ‘the letter’. If you recall we need the State Licensing Agency (which I think is DCFS??) to issue a letter stating that Lutheran Child and Family Services is the same as Lutheran Child and Family Services OF ILLINOIS and operate under the same license. Our caseworker, Carole, emailed this information out last Friday explaining the situation. When she hadn’t heard anything at the beginning of the week she followed up with an additional email. She told us she felt she should give the agency a full week to respond and then she would try to make phone contact as well. So today was the one week mark and Carole made the call. The lady told her first that she had tried to get back with her earlier in the week (left no voicemail nor replied to either email). Then she insisted that there was no way that she could write such a letter and that it was a legal matter. Blah blah blah. Carole kept insisting that she was certain the letter could be written and that she was sure it had been done in the past. Well the lady kept sticking to her guns and was NOT going to write the letter. Carole pushed one last time and at that moment the lady’s supervisor walked by the door. She called her supervisor to the phone to verify what she was saying so that Carole would get off her back I’m sure. The supervisor listened to what the request was and stated that they absolutely COULD write the letter and both the person that needed to write it and the person that needed to sign it were in the office. She stated they would do their best to convince them to get it done today and in the mail. I am praying that it gets sent out today!

You know it wasn’t all that long ago that I would have attributed the supervisor walking past the no-lady’s office to coincidence and considered myself lucky. Now I know that it has very little to do with luck or coincidence. I truly believe that God intervened on our behalf today. It was not coincidence that she walked past the door at that exact moment. It wasn’t coincidence that the no-lady felt compelled to call her supervisor to the phone. Nor is it coincidence that we have a great caseworker who is just as invested in our journey as we are! God knows the plans he has for us. And I am very grateful He spared us the heartache and headache today from hearing that we couldn’t produce ‘the letter’.