A lot has been going on and I am formulating a new update post. But in the meantime, I want to shed light on the current attitudes rampant in Eastern Europe, towards people/children with special needs. Read this:
http://orphans.kharkov.ua/eng/articles_sick_children_with_cerebral_palsy./
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
The Locusts
During marriage counseling in my previous marriage, the fatherly counselor said to me: "And do you want to have children?" He looked at me quickly, smiled, then said: "Well, of course, you do I can see it all over your face; you have a mother's heart, I can tell." That was 19 years ago. I waited, long and hard.......
.
Yesterday, we got word that our dossier is in the hands of our Facilitator, a world away. He will be turning it in next week, and then we wait for our approval to travel. Other adoptive parents from this country have only waited about 2 to 3 weeks after that to receive their approval. Please pray that our wait would be short, too. Our wonderful small group at church, is having a Yard Sale fundraiser for us this Saturday! And we have been generously offered another $500 matching grant! We only have about $279 left, to meet it by Mon. May 27th.
There are not adequate words to describe what the Lord is doing in my heart during this time. But I can say that something deep down inside of me that was eroded over time, is now being restored. And I know my dear husband has had his own painful journey of disappointment and waiting. But our gracious Lord is there working, ordering, crafting still. He is creating a family and we rejoice in Him.
"I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten-..."
Joel 2:25a
Friday, May 10, 2013
Mailed!
Yes, we DID mail our dossier to another adoptive mom who is traveling to our children's country this Sunday. She will deliver it to our Facilitator the following Tuesday. We're not sure if it was supposed to be apostilled or authenticated, but we're just moving forward with sending it.
Thank you for your continued encouragement and prayers and support!!
Love,
Lara
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
The SOS Continued
So I left the SOS office that day heartbroken and worried that this delay might cost us everything. David and I panicked for a while but tried to submit it to the Lord and trust in His timing.
I asked David if he was sure that our notary would be back to work on Monday and he wasn't sure. Then it occurred to me that maybe she'd understand and be willing to meet us over the weekend so we'd have the dossier ready early this past Monday. So David emailed her husband and asked and we waited. All of this happening while I was getting over a bout of unexplained vertigo and infection.
Finally on that Saturday evening, we heard back from Lisa, our notary. She said she'd be happy to meet us at David's work on Sunday afternoon to re-do most of her notaries on our paperwork! We were SO GRATEFUL and felt the Lord urging us on. So Saturday we spent the day re-making half of our dossier in the computer and checking and re-checking to make sure it was all correct again. Hard to believe, but David found a few other small mistakes and corrected those. Then Sunday we moped into church but left early, encouraged. We drove straight to David's workplace and met Lisa and she signed, dated and stamped away. She refused to take any money for it and wanted it to be her gift to our children. Please bless her for us, Lord! Monday came and I dropped David off at work and drove straight to the SOS office. With trembling hands I passed our re-made dossier over the high desk and into the hands of the same sour woman. I told her we had corrected them and she remembered me. She took the thick packet and told me to call back the next morning after 10 to check on it's status. So I walked to my car while continually looking behind me because I was imagining someone running after me to tell me that something else was incorrect. But no one did.
Tuesday morning at 10 am I called to check on the status of our dossier. The lady who answered said that it was ready to go. I didn't get too excited, I still wondered how many times things would have to be re-done. Again I drove the 30 miles from our house into downtown Raleigh. The sour lady handed me our dossier, it was crammed into a manila envelope that I had to tear to get it out. She told me to check it over before leaving as I thought the same. I sat down and pulled it all out and noticed right away that each document had the affixed sealed paper but it said "apostille" and something about the Hague Convention. Again they had ignored my special requests and all the papers were in disarray and each page was not separately notarized. My head was spinning and my stomach was churning. I called David and told him the news and asked him to try to contact our Facilitator or Facilitator's assistant to ask them if this would work like this. You see, a lot of people assume that our children's country is included in the group of Hague Convention countries, because it used to be a part of the Soviet Union. But it is not. I had included in our packet a list of Hague countries because it was mentioned to me that they believed it was included in the Hague Convention, too. What this means is that there is a different process and paper seal that goes on the documents depending on whether or not each country is included. She had attached the wrong paperwork to EVERY PIECE OF PAPER. She had ignored my special request again and neglected to process each notary separately. So while David tried to get a hold of our Facilitator I wrote out the corrections that needed to be made in case the clerk would not let me speak to the processor. Thank the Lord, the sour one was busy, so I asked the other clerk and she called the processor to come help me. And this second processor was different. She was caring and listened to what I had to say. I explained to her that our children's country is not a part of the Hague Convention and our paperwork needed to be processed accordingly. She said that her computer said differently but she went to check on this again. She came back with a printout from her computer that clearly included our children's country in the Hague Convention! I screamed in my head for half a second, but then she said that if I insisted she would go ahead and re-process it by "authentication" and NOT "apostille" (for Hague). I asked if I could call my husband first and then let her know right away and she agreed and went back to her office somewhere. I called hubby and he said our Facilitator's assistant said "Yes, they must be changed." So I called Shirley's direct line (yes this processing lady was nice enough to give me her direct #) and confirmed that we did need the whole thing re-done and told her about the other problems. She agreed and said to come back tomorrow to pick it up, but if she had to re-do it back to the way she had done it before she would charge us the $300 again. So once again I included special instructions for the corrections, hoping that they would not be ignored this time.
On my way home, I call David again to see if he also heard from our Facilitator about it. And our Facilitator sent David a picture of what the sealed pages from the SOS should look like. But guess what they looked like?!?! They looked exactly like the "apostilled" pages that she had originally gave me!!! We both felt sick again. I almost lost my mind for a second, but pulled it back together so I could continue driving and holding the phone. David thought maybe I should turn around and try to stop her from changing anything. But by the time I got there the office would be closed for the day. We didn't really know what to do and we hung up. I just drove and prayed and recited verses and prayed some more. When I was almost home I thought to myself: "Well, I asked her to process them as she would any non-Hague country so hopefully that is what she will do."
So this morning I called to check the status of our dossier after 10 am again. They said it would be ready in an hour. So a little later I made the trek again to the dusty outdated SOS office with a queasy stomach. Once again, I took our dossier from the sour lady to look it over and put it back in order so I could make sure everything was there and properly done. The sealed papers did not say "apostille" and "Hague" on them anymore and each notary was separately authenticated and every piece was there. Wonder of wonders...Only now we're not sure who has the correct information on what this paperwork should look like. I brought our completed dossier to David to prepare it to mail to our children's country.
Now we're not sure if it will be accepted by our Facilitator because, even though it has been processed correctly now, his website shows that it should look exactly like the first way. So please pray that it will be approved by our Facilitator and please pray that when we travel, all our documents will be approved by the government there. Please also pray that these delays will not cause us to lose the children that we are pursuing, which is a very real possibility, due to the upsetting (confidential) information we received from the orphanage last week. Sorry this was so long, but it has helped me to write it all out.
I asked David if he was sure that our notary would be back to work on Monday and he wasn't sure. Then it occurred to me that maybe she'd understand and be willing to meet us over the weekend so we'd have the dossier ready early this past Monday. So David emailed her husband and asked and we waited. All of this happening while I was getting over a bout of unexplained vertigo and infection.
Finally on that Saturday evening, we heard back from Lisa, our notary. She said she'd be happy to meet us at David's work on Sunday afternoon to re-do most of her notaries on our paperwork! We were SO GRATEFUL and felt the Lord urging us on. So Saturday we spent the day re-making half of our dossier in the computer and checking and re-checking to make sure it was all correct again. Hard to believe, but David found a few other small mistakes and corrected those. Then Sunday we moped into church but left early, encouraged. We drove straight to David's workplace and met Lisa and she signed, dated and stamped away. She refused to take any money for it and wanted it to be her gift to our children. Please bless her for us, Lord! Monday came and I dropped David off at work and drove straight to the SOS office. With trembling hands I passed our re-made dossier over the high desk and into the hands of the same sour woman. I told her we had corrected them and she remembered me. She took the thick packet and told me to call back the next morning after 10 to check on it's status. So I walked to my car while continually looking behind me because I was imagining someone running after me to tell me that something else was incorrect. But no one did.
Tuesday morning at 10 am I called to check on the status of our dossier. The lady who answered said that it was ready to go. I didn't get too excited, I still wondered how many times things would have to be re-done. Again I drove the 30 miles from our house into downtown Raleigh. The sour lady handed me our dossier, it was crammed into a manila envelope that I had to tear to get it out. She told me to check it over before leaving as I thought the same. I sat down and pulled it all out and noticed right away that each document had the affixed sealed paper but it said "apostille" and something about the Hague Convention. Again they had ignored my special requests and all the papers were in disarray and each page was not separately notarized. My head was spinning and my stomach was churning. I called David and told him the news and asked him to try to contact our Facilitator or Facilitator's assistant to ask them if this would work like this. You see, a lot of people assume that our children's country is included in the group of Hague Convention countries, because it used to be a part of the Soviet Union. But it is not. I had included in our packet a list of Hague countries because it was mentioned to me that they believed it was included in the Hague Convention, too. What this means is that there is a different process and paper seal that goes on the documents depending on whether or not each country is included. She had attached the wrong paperwork to EVERY PIECE OF PAPER. She had ignored my special request again and neglected to process each notary separately. So while David tried to get a hold of our Facilitator I wrote out the corrections that needed to be made in case the clerk would not let me speak to the processor. Thank the Lord, the sour one was busy, so I asked the other clerk and she called the processor to come help me. And this second processor was different. She was caring and listened to what I had to say. I explained to her that our children's country is not a part of the Hague Convention and our paperwork needed to be processed accordingly. She said that her computer said differently but she went to check on this again. She came back with a printout from her computer that clearly included our children's country in the Hague Convention! I screamed in my head for half a second, but then she said that if I insisted she would go ahead and re-process it by "authentication" and NOT "apostille" (for Hague). I asked if I could call my husband first and then let her know right away and she agreed and went back to her office somewhere. I called hubby and he said our Facilitator's assistant said "Yes, they must be changed." So I called Shirley's direct line (yes this processing lady was nice enough to give me her direct #) and confirmed that we did need the whole thing re-done and told her about the other problems. She agreed and said to come back tomorrow to pick it up, but if she had to re-do it back to the way she had done it before she would charge us the $300 again. So once again I included special instructions for the corrections, hoping that they would not be ignored this time.
On my way home, I call David again to see if he also heard from our Facilitator about it. And our Facilitator sent David a picture of what the sealed pages from the SOS should look like. But guess what they looked like?!?! They looked exactly like the "apostilled" pages that she had originally gave me!!! We both felt sick again. I almost lost my mind for a second, but pulled it back together so I could continue driving and holding the phone. David thought maybe I should turn around and try to stop her from changing anything. But by the time I got there the office would be closed for the day. We didn't really know what to do and we hung up. I just drove and prayed and recited verses and prayed some more. When I was almost home I thought to myself: "Well, I asked her to process them as she would any non-Hague country so hopefully that is what she will do."
So this morning I called to check the status of our dossier after 10 am again. They said it would be ready in an hour. So a little later I made the trek again to the dusty outdated SOS office with a queasy stomach. Once again, I took our dossier from the sour lady to look it over and put it back in order so I could make sure everything was there and properly done. The sealed papers did not say "apostille" and "Hague" on them anymore and each notary was separately authenticated and every piece was there. Wonder of wonders...Only now we're not sure who has the correct information on what this paperwork should look like. I brought our completed dossier to David to prepare it to mail to our children's country.
Now we're not sure if it will be accepted by our Facilitator because, even though it has been processed correctly now, his website shows that it should look exactly like the first way. So please pray that it will be approved by our Facilitator and please pray that when we travel, all our documents will be approved by the government there. Please also pray that these delays will not cause us to lose the children that we are pursuing, which is a very real possibility, due to the upsetting (confidential) information we received from the orphanage last week. Sorry this was so long, but it has helped me to write it all out.
Caught in the Swell
So I'm not sure what to write today. Just when you think the adoption process can't get any more difficult, it does. It is not for the faint of heart and I'm thankful that the Lord is holding us up, because we are the faint of heart, I'm sure.
Last post we were hoping that the Dr. would re-do our medical statements and thank the Lord he graciously did. I hope the Cinnamon Raisin bread he got, truly expressed our gratitude. After that, there were still more corrections and re-do's to our Home Study and pre-dossier paperwork. There were some required papers that we just couldn't get, but thankfully our Facilitator says now, that they are not absolutely required. The laws are continually changing, so that adds to the difficulty and frustration.
The spiritual attacks increased and it has been very personal and painful (and that's all I will share, we have had to become more guarded to protect ourselves). But because of the Lord's redeeming grace, what is meant to destroy us and stop us from adopting has led to greater strength. But, we are still staggering from the blows and appreciate prayers.
Thankfully our experience at the Immigration Office went very smoothly and pleasantly. And we got our paperwork back in a timely manner. That was great! Then we were generously offered a $500 matching grant from our brother from our small group at church. After it was all said and done, we tripled the $500! Praise the Lord! Then my wonderful friends, Liam and Karen, that I know from my Irish club back home, offered to do their amazing Irish stage show and donate the proceeds! They, and my mom and dad and a lot of other lovely people, turned it into a activity-packed fundraiser for us. I've heard great things about the night (I wanted to be there, but we live across the country now) and it brought in a large amount to help us out! We're so thankful.
So this past 2 months we have been very busy with fundraising, preparing our home, and finalizing our dossier. And it has been a whirlwind, that continues. We finally had our dossier ready to be authenticated and sealed by the Secretary of State last week. Everything was compliant, every date matched, every detail of information was corroborated within the 41 page stack and everything was signed, dated and stamped by our notary. So I went down to the SOS office to turn it in and the next trial began. *sigh*
The receptionist took the fruits of our labor (the stack) and immediately started putting them in a different order, completely ignoring the special instructions I wrote in the "special instructions" section on the office's required cover letter. She basically split them in half in some jumbled up order and handed back to me the order page that I had attached to the special instructions, so that they would keep it in the order in which our childrens' country requires. I handed it back to her and said it was attached because it went with our special instructions. She made a disgusted face and put it back. Then without any other communication with me, she dialed the processing lady's number. I tried to quickly express and plead for the urgency of our situation before she started talking to her co-worker, but I found out shortly that she was already whispering to this woman when she said a little louder: "Hold on, she's talking to me while I'm trying to talk to you..." with another sour expression. You see, we had found out some upsetting information from the orphanage the day before, that makes our adoption more urgent. After all that we have gone through in this process, the trials and re-do's, and then to receive bad news and then to face this careless person who holds the rescue of our children in her hands, it was hard. So after their phone conversation, the processing lady comes out and does not acknowledge me but just comes directly to the receptionist and they whisper again. She then takes our paperwork and starts making her own order and putting things in 2 stack and sloppily stapling things, and I cringe, wondering if our documents will make it out alive. They whisper again and the sour lady hands it back to me and says something about why it's being rejected. With tear-filled eyes I'm trying to stay calm and drag enough clear information out of this woman to fix our paperwork so they will accept it. Apparently, half of our notary statements indicated the county that they were notarized in, and they all needed to. So I was told to come back later with that fixed, as if it was so easy. It happened to be Friday and our notary was out-of-town AND that meant we had to go home and edit and re-print each of the 20 or so documents and then have our notary re-date, re-sign and re-stamp each one. Well before I left I noticed that one document DID have the county but was placed in the rejected pile so I asked the processing lady before she ran back to her office. She said that that one was ok, and as she walked away I tried to again express the dire situation and she just interrupted and spoke over me, to tell me to come back later.
TO BE CONTINUED.....(I'm going again to the SOS office for the 4th time right now and then I'll finish the story as it unfolds...)
Last post we were hoping that the Dr. would re-do our medical statements and thank the Lord he graciously did. I hope the Cinnamon Raisin bread he got, truly expressed our gratitude. After that, there were still more corrections and re-do's to our Home Study and pre-dossier paperwork. There were some required papers that we just couldn't get, but thankfully our Facilitator says now, that they are not absolutely required. The laws are continually changing, so that adds to the difficulty and frustration.
The spiritual attacks increased and it has been very personal and painful (and that's all I will share, we have had to become more guarded to protect ourselves). But because of the Lord's redeeming grace, what is meant to destroy us and stop us from adopting has led to greater strength. But, we are still staggering from the blows and appreciate prayers.
Thankfully our experience at the Immigration Office went very smoothly and pleasantly. And we got our paperwork back in a timely manner. That was great! Then we were generously offered a $500 matching grant from our brother from our small group at church. After it was all said and done, we tripled the $500! Praise the Lord! Then my wonderful friends, Liam and Karen, that I know from my Irish club back home, offered to do their amazing Irish stage show and donate the proceeds! They, and my mom and dad and a lot of other lovely people, turned it into a activity-packed fundraiser for us. I've heard great things about the night (I wanted to be there, but we live across the country now) and it brought in a large amount to help us out! We're so thankful.
So this past 2 months we have been very busy with fundraising, preparing our home, and finalizing our dossier. And it has been a whirlwind, that continues. We finally had our dossier ready to be authenticated and sealed by the Secretary of State last week. Everything was compliant, every date matched, every detail of information was corroborated within the 41 page stack and everything was signed, dated and stamped by our notary. So I went down to the SOS office to turn it in and the next trial began. *sigh*
The receptionist took the fruits of our labor (the stack) and immediately started putting them in a different order, completely ignoring the special instructions I wrote in the "special instructions" section on the office's required cover letter. She basically split them in half in some jumbled up order and handed back to me the order page that I had attached to the special instructions, so that they would keep it in the order in which our childrens' country requires. I handed it back to her and said it was attached because it went with our special instructions. She made a disgusted face and put it back. Then without any other communication with me, she dialed the processing lady's number. I tried to quickly express and plead for the urgency of our situation before she started talking to her co-worker, but I found out shortly that she was already whispering to this woman when she said a little louder: "Hold on, she's talking to me while I'm trying to talk to you..." with another sour expression. You see, we had found out some upsetting information from the orphanage the day before, that makes our adoption more urgent. After all that we have gone through in this process, the trials and re-do's, and then to receive bad news and then to face this careless person who holds the rescue of our children in her hands, it was hard. So after their phone conversation, the processing lady comes out and does not acknowledge me but just comes directly to the receptionist and they whisper again. She then takes our paperwork and starts making her own order and putting things in 2 stack and sloppily stapling things, and I cringe, wondering if our documents will make it out alive. They whisper again and the sour lady hands it back to me and says something about why it's being rejected. With tear-filled eyes I'm trying to stay calm and drag enough clear information out of this woman to fix our paperwork so they will accept it. Apparently, half of our notary statements indicated the county that they were notarized in, and they all needed to. So I was told to come back later with that fixed, as if it was so easy. It happened to be Friday and our notary was out-of-town AND that meant we had to go home and edit and re-print each of the 20 or so documents and then have our notary re-date, re-sign and re-stamp each one. Well before I left I noticed that one document DID have the county but was placed in the rejected pile so I asked the processing lady before she ran back to her office. She said that that one was ok, and as she walked away I tried to again express the dire situation and she just interrupted and spoke over me, to tell me to come back later.
TO BE CONTINUED.....(I'm going again to the SOS office for the 4th time right now and then I'll finish the story as it unfolds...)
Thursday, March 7, 2013
And, repeat...
We received our Home Study Approval in rough draft form. It was a very happy day when we got it! (We had no idea what we were in for.) Now we are scouring through it to make sure everything is correct. Scouring and correcting and scouring and...It also has to be checked by our Facilitator team to make sure it is in exact compliance with the children's country's requirements, before they can translate it. So we have them looking over it with a fine-tooth comb and telling us more corrections to make. And we also have to re-send my background check back to CA, to be properly notarized and apostilled.
That has been a funny back-and-forth "Comedy of Errors". Back in November we had planned to just wait until our Christmas trip to CA to hand-deliver my background request to the appropriate office. I had some misgivings about how that would go, remembering how frustrating it can be to deal with CA government. So the day before Christmas Eve, we drove down to the office that David had found to be the correct place to turn in our request, when he was researching it on the internet. We walked in to this huge building and spoke to the Officer who was handling security at the front desk. After we explained what we needed to do, he told us that they do receive these requests there but we had to turn it in at the Courthouse and then it would be sent to this building.
Being a Charles Dickens fan I had a flashback to the description of government in Little Dorritt, and chuckled to myself. We headed over to the gigantic Courthouse and I vaguely remembered going there for fingerprinting when I got one of my first jobs, and I knew this was not going to be easy. It sure makes me appreciate small-town NC living. When I got my NC driver's license, the tiny office had one person waiting before me, and 2 laughing-smiling employees that welcomed me in and chatted with me about how I liked it here. (I know my Sacramento friends will lament over that DMV experience.) We walked into the Courthouse, and met a very nice older security guard enclosed in a raised, bullet-proof bubble. As we explained our request he started to silently shake his head and said he was sorry we came all that way. He said he couldn't even get any employees on the phone, but he tried to ring us through to the proper person in the offices above. And we found that what he said was true; we would've been better off mailing this request from across the country rather than standing some feet below the person that needed to fill it out. So the next day, we mailed the request from Carmichael to Sacramento and we did actually get it back not too long after the holidays. However,..................there was a note written on it saying that it had to include the address of the American Embassy in the children's country. So we did some digging and found the proper address and mailed it back again. This time we received it back but discovered it has to be notarized and apostilled in CA. And a few days later we got another letter from CA saying that it was rejected again, even though they had just sent it back approved. Hmmmmmm......curious. So we were advised to just use the approved version and we mailed it to my mom to ask that she would get it notarized and apostilled yesterday. Oy vay!
A few days ago my poor frazzled hubby decided we needed to just sit down together and have a do-or-die session of handling as much of these corrections, no matter how late we stayed up. (He is very busy at work, then comes home to fix computers to earn extra $ then stays up late working on adoption paperwork.) Upon going through our Home Study approval and Dossier AGAIN on this late night, we also realized that since we recently started 2013, all of the pages said "2012" where the notary must sign. Soooooo, we had to go through every page and change that little lone number to a 3. And upon doing that, we realized that the difficult ordeal of pinning down our very popular and busy doctor to get him to do our medical statements together (since we have one car and live in the sticks), was now null and void because of that tiny ornery 2!
Why can't you just white it out, you say? Well because our adoption country requires NO LINES, NO CORRECTIONS, NO WHITE-OUT, NO COPIES. :) I hope we can look back and laugh at this someday, like you already initiated-adoptive parents. We're praying that our kind doctor will have the same patience he had with us a few weeks ago, when he filled them out in the required, blue-ink.
Oh well! I'm thankful that the details are not in my hands. The Lord directs every step and every delay. He has made it clear to us that He has these children in the center of His loving care; though we may not understand all He allows. The future and the past are entirely His domain. We are only to respond in the present, with obedience. And when the water of time passes through our hands, we realize that He had the cupful of the present under His absolute control, as well.
We hope to turn in our immigration paperwork next week and should get that approval in a month or so. Then we can send our dossier; which is our summation of paperwork to the country where the children are. And then we could get our approval to travel 3-4 weeks later and then the actual travel date could be 3-4 weeks after approval. So we may be traveling late April, early May? We can see the light on the horizon. If you feel led, can you share our donation link, (donations to it are tax deductible)? Thank you so much for supporting these kiddos and helping us bring them home! We love you!
OUR FUND LINK: http://reecesrainbow.org/47374/sponsorwingler
Friday, February 22, 2013
"Poof!" Gone!
The Lord keeps raining down blessings! Yesterday a friend from church helped me pick up another twin mattress and box spring from another friend! So now all we need is one more twin box spring!
I was about to cancel out our last Facebook auction and then you all started bidding, thank you! And our Reece's Rainbow grant fund keeps changing. That just makes us giddy!
A while back, David was in a lot of pain and needed a test to find out what was wrong. Sadly it just happened to be while we were still waiting to get our new insurance cards. His company had just switched insurance companies. So the conscientious billing man at the Lab cautioned us and said that if we don't get pre-authorization the insurance co. will most likely reject coverage of the expensive scan. We weren't sure what to do. I was praying while David and this man tried to get insurance info from David's employer on the phone. All while my poor hubby is in a lot of pain. So we weren't able to get pre-authorization without the card and they just couldn't get it handled on the phone so we talked about it and decided to just trust the Lord with the bill and get him in to be seen. Later when we got the bill, it was not pretty. So we did everything we could to appeal. And David's employer even tried to help since it was a result of us not having the insurance card yet. We were denied twice. I just thought, well if the Lord can provide the humongous amount we need for the adoption, a comparitively small medical bill would not stand in His way either and we would just keep working to pay that large amount also.
I'll let you read David's account of what happened next:
Have a great rest of the week!
David Wingler"
Philippians 4:19 "And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus."
I was about to cancel out our last Facebook auction and then you all started bidding, thank you! And our Reece's Rainbow grant fund keeps changing. That just makes us giddy!
A while back, David was in a lot of pain and needed a test to find out what was wrong. Sadly it just happened to be while we were still waiting to get our new insurance cards. His company had just switched insurance companies. So the conscientious billing man at the Lab cautioned us and said that if we don't get pre-authorization the insurance co. will most likely reject coverage of the expensive scan. We weren't sure what to do. I was praying while David and this man tried to get insurance info from David's employer on the phone. All while my poor hubby is in a lot of pain. So we weren't able to get pre-authorization without the card and they just couldn't get it handled on the phone so we talked about it and decided to just trust the Lord with the bill and get him in to be seen. Later when we got the bill, it was not pretty. So we did everything we could to appeal. And David's employer even tried to help since it was a result of us not having the insurance card yet. We were denied twice. I just thought, well if the Lord can provide the humongous amount we need for the adoption, a comparitively small medical bill would not stand in His way either and we would just keep working to pay that large amount also.
I'll let you read David's account of what happened next:
"Hello,
I just wanted to give you all an update on the insurance situation I've been dealing with regarding a Cat Scan I had back in December. I received my 2nd denial letter in the mail yesterday stating that Aetna was not going to pay the claim for my Cat Scan. So... I decided to call the billing department of the radiology office out of curiosity and ask what my balance was... I didn't mention anything about what was going on. I just nicely asked for my balance. When she said $0.00 I about fell out of my chair. So even after I waived my rights to get a discount on the $950.00 charge and agreed to pay the amount in full if insurance wouldn't pay... The radiology office still ate the whole charge.
All I can say is we serve an AMAZING God! I just wanted to give you all an update on the insurance situation I've been dealing with regarding a Cat Scan I had back in December. I received my 2nd denial letter in the mail yesterday stating that Aetna was not going to pay the claim for my Cat Scan. So... I decided to call the billing department of the radiology office out of curiosity and ask what my balance was... I didn't mention anything about what was going on. I just nicely asked for my balance. When she said $0.00 I about fell out of my chair. So even after I waived my rights to get a discount on the $950.00 charge and agreed to pay the amount in full if insurance wouldn't pay... The radiology office still ate the whole charge.
Philippians 4:19 "And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus."
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