As you know, Hannah was born 11 days ago and now we are waiting for her documents to be processed so that we can go back to Ukraine. We would really like to be back in Lviv as soon as possible and in a way this time of waiting is really hard. We were told that it will take at least a month before we get Hannah’s birth certificate and passport. But we know that God can do anything so we wanted to ask you to pray that if it be God’s will, that by some miracle, we would receive these documents sooner.
On June 10th, our friend Lydia Johnson (17) is coming to be with us for three weeks. Our plan was that these three weeks would be spent in Lviv and that Lydia would both get to enjoy our little Hannah and also would help us with some of our youth ministry. It would be really great for our youth in Lviv to get to know Lydia, who is just a little older than some of them and could be a great example of someone who is close to their age and is a true follower of Christ. So please pray that if God would like Lydia to be able to be with us in Lviv (not just Krakow) that He would make it possible for us to return to Lviv soon.
As we already said, we know that God can do anything. And we experienced one such miracle even this morning...
We traveled from Krakow to Prague this week to take care of all the needed paperwork for Hannah. Tomasz called this place in Prague where they do this and he set up an appointment for today even though they normally accept these applications only on Mondays and Wednesdays. So we came there this morning all ready to take care of all that was needed to be done only to learn that this process has two parts, done in two different offices, and we only had the appointment set up with one of them.
The lady in the first office was nice and did her part but she said that it was VERY UNLIKELY that the other lady in the other office would help us out since it was not the official day for her to accept our paperwork. We were told that just yesterday there was another couple like us (they too traveled from a different country to submit these documents) and she refused to help them because it was not the right day and they did not have an appointment set up specifically with her. We were also told that there are actually two ladies working in that office and that both are pretty mean and that it is close to impossible that we would succeed with either of them. So that was REALLY DISCOURAGING to hear. We traveled all the way from Krakow for this and we hoped to speed up the whole process by bringing our documents to Prague (instead of submitting them through the embassy in Poland). And now we were told that we would probably have to wait till next week...
Well, when the first lady went to get our receipt and we were left alone in her office, Tomasz said that we would go try the other office any ways and he took couple of minutes to pray to God that He would do a miracle for us... That He would grant us favor with that “mean lady”.
We left the first office and started looking for room 101 where the other part of our paperwork had to be done... And here we see a lady standing in front of the #101 door asking us if we needed help with anything. Yes, it was the “mean lady” asking us if there was anything she could help us with! So we told her what we needed and we explained our situation and she was very nice and helpful and did everything that we needed her to do. She even said that she will try to have the documents mailed more directly to us when they are ready so that we could get them a little earlier. Isn’t God amazing?
So that was a HUGE ANSWER TO PRAYER and nothing short of a miracle! Our God is so faithful!
We know that if it be His will, He can again do a miracle and get us Hannah’s birth certificate and passport sooner than in a month. We are praying for this and it will mean a lot to us if you join us in prayer. Thank you so much!
Here are some pictures for you to enjoy.
http://picasaweb.google.com/HannahJoyChmiel
Blessings,
Tomasz and Miriam
