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Our friends and family have heard me rant about this for the past few days, so instead of telling the story one more time to them, I thought I would share it with you. Oh, so lucky!

On Friday after, just about the same time that the people are beginning to feel antsy for the weekend, we found out that we needed to get our fingerprints taken again and processed.
The big problem about this is not the inconvenience of driving two hours, paying another fee, or filling out more paperwork- but that getting a fingerprint appointment can take up to six weeks simply to schedule. I did not have six weeks, I had five days!

Over the course of the next few hours this is what unfolded.

The director of our agency left for a two week out of the country trip.

Our caseworker left for a two week out of the country trip.

Our homestudy agency director went on vacation.

I could not get a hold of our homestudy worker.

I found a helpful chap at our agency, who was willing to assist me at 4:30pm on a Friday afternoon, but informed me that his wife was going to have a baby this weekend and he would be gone for the rest of the month.

The emails to USCIS began. I tried to make them friendly and not let the panic show through, even thought I did type URGENT in big letters on the subject line.

The call to USCIS was made and this is what I heard in laymen’s terms: You can only call on Tuesdays and Thursdays between certain hours. Do not leave a message unless it fits one of three criteria.

Our situation did not meet the criteria, so no message was left.

I have never wanted to actually hear a human voice more- no emails, no voice messages, no recordings!

We went the whole weekend, knowing only that if we did not get these fingerprints that I would have to change my flight to Ethiopia. Saturday and Sunday, as we expected, we did not hear anything.

At church on Sunday a friend listened to our prayer request and approached us about an inside email address he had for a lady that works in our USCIS office. Yes!
As soon as we were home I pulled out the computer and started typing away. Just as quickly as the email was sent, we received an automatic message. The worker was on vacation until the day of my trip to Ethiopia!

Monday morning came and went. Still nothing. Panic was setting in.

Finally, an email came through. It said that our request could not be accepted through email and must be post mailed, but in light of the emergency they would accept a fax as long as I could send copies of my airline tickets.

Problem- our airline tickets were being shipped to us from our travel agency and were on a FedEx truck with an expected delivery time of the next day.

After pointless calls to FedEx (what was I going to do, track down the truck?) it dawned on me to simply call our travel agency and have them send copies of the tickets to us through a fax. Thank you to the quick work and helpful attitude of Kari at Susan Parr Travel Agency the fax came through within twenty minutes.

We gathered the documents needed and faxed them to USCIS hoping for the best.

To make a long story short, we did get a fingerprint appointment. When I called to confirm before leaving for a two-hour drive on Tuesday morning the orphan officer that answered the phone coldly and harshly told me that they did not know what I was talking about. Then, she was gone. I thought she had hung up on me, but alas I was being transferred. And then we heard it- the sentence that has haunted us these past few days.

“We would like to help, but the man in charge is on vacation all week!”

I was not going to let this stop me. With perseverance we plowed through and got them to agree to let us come in for our fingerprinting.

It was a blessing that the fingerprint center was full of nice people. Everyone on the phone had been so harsh to us. I was at the point of breaking down if another person treated me like I was a criminal when all I wanted was to have my fingerprints done so that I could bring home my baby.

Six integral people in this matter were on vacation, having babies, or missing in action. We talked to a lot of mean people trying to figure this out alone.
In the end, the small talk and smile of the lady who took our fingerprints meant more to us than we ever could have thought. Plus, we made it in time to not have to change my travel plans to Ethiopia.

Thanks, fingerprint lady, for saving the day in more ways than one…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 at 10:19 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.