Thank you, Lord!

We got our fingerprints done! It was totally easy peasy and MUCH less stressful than we were anticipating. I had kind of forgotten that our actual appointment date wasn't until July 2 until we were in the car on the way there.

Jason said to me, "You should be mentally prepared that they will say no to us, you know."

So as we walked into this completely nondescript building with nearly nothing posted to indicate that it is a major government building, I was surprised to see a gruff looking government security guard greet us. Looking at us over his glasses, he grunted, "Need to see your appointment card."

Jason grinned, trying to crack a reciprocal smile out of Mr.Grumpy.

"Um, you see, our appointment isn't for another 2 weeks. But we were hoping ... "

Mr. Grumpy stopped shuffling papers and looked at us again. He noticed our daughters, dressed in matching  floral dresses, their hair braided. He looked at the baby riding on my back. She peeked out from around me and waved. Last, he looked at me and seemed to wonder if I was with this guy. I smiled broadly and poked the girls - their cue to smile and look cute. Thankfully, they obeyed.

Mr. Grumpy interrupted Jason by pointing at the roomful of empty chairs. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire was playing on a television mounted to the ceiling. As we all followed his point to the empty room, we noticed another set of desks with two men stationed behind them. The men had official looking badges and matching shirts. They easily could have been irritated by our interruption of their game show.

Jason and I looked at each other, both thinking the same thing:

He's going to kick us out. He's going to tell us to come back in two weeks like they told us. He's looking at our paper and he's going to send us an hour and a half back home because we can't follow directions.

But instead, he pointed to the empty chairs, and said, "You'll have to wait in line."

Then he laughed at his very funny joke.

He smiled a big smile, handed each of us a short questionnaire, and told us to go ahead to the front of the  line where those 2 nice government guys would be happy to help us.

We laughed a little bit louder at his joke than maybe we should have, but we were so relieved! We parked the girls in front of the game show and stepped up to the official FBI fingerprinting machines.

After an inspection of our palms, a couple of beeps on a very fancy computer, 10 fingerprint photographs, and no more than 5 minutes, we were done!

We thanked everyone as we nearly skipped out the door. The last bit of legwork before our dossier can get sent to Ghana! Now we wait for the results of our fingerprinting to be mailed to us and we can get our dossier on its way!

Thanks, everyone, for praying for us!