We have seen a great deal of change in our boys, Will and Jake, since we brought them home a year and a half ago. They came to us speaking only French and now they speak mostly English (with an impressive vocabulary!), along with some Wolof and French. They have both moved about 20% higher on the height and weight charts for their age. For example, when Will came to us he measured in the 3rd percentile for his age; now he is in the 30th percentile for height! At first, Jake would only eat a few familiar foods: rice, bread, eggs, bananas. Almost everything else he put in his mouth, he would chew and then take back out. He no longer does this! Both boys now enjoy a wide variety of foods. One of their favorites is peanut butter and jelly sandwiches — obviously they are ready to officially become American citizens!
Many of you have been praying for us since we started this adoption process in 2013. We never imagined it would take us this long to get this point! We had hoped our trip to the US in March 2019 would have resulted in the boys receiving their citizenship, but due to a State Department rule change and poor communication between US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) and the US Embassy in Dakar, we are having to do this further step. But we are thankful to finally be nearing the end of this process! USCIS granted both boys an appointment for their citizenship interviews on January 27 in Hartford, CT. We have purchased plane tickets for the four of us (Corey, Katie, Will & Jake) to spend just over three weeks in Connecticut while our three girls are at boarding school. We will be in the US from January 23 to February 18.
We are overwhelmed with gratitude for how the Lord has already provided so much of what we need for this trip. Friends have generously covered the cost of our transportation from Kaffrine to Simsbury, including the plane tickets. Isn’t that amazing and wonderful!? Other friends have volunteered to let us stay with them. (We sincerely hope that they don’t regret this later!) And someone else has offered us the use of their vehicle. These sacrificial gifts have been such an encouragement to us during this stressful time and have reassured us that the Lord, and His people, love us and are close by with a helping hand.
We would love to be able to borrow a second car for when our out-of-town family comes to see us and so that Corey and I can use our time more efficiently. And we are looking to borrow three car seats as well (a booster seat for Jake, a 5-point harness car seat for Will, and a 5-point harness car seat for our 2-year old nephew just for a week). If you have a car or a car seat we can borrow, let me know via email or Facebook messenger. We will also need to borrow winter coats, boots, snow pants, and clothes for the boys. As a side note, if you have boys’ summer clothing sizes 5 – 8 in good shape that your sons have outgrown, we will happily take them back to Senegal with us for Will and Jake.
Thank you, friends! Looking forward to seeing some of you soon!
We received a reply from US Citizenship and Immigration
Services (USCIS) today. Unfortunately, they did not issue Will and Jake
citizenship as we had hoped, citing the fact that we do not reside in the US as
the reason for this refusal. They suggested we apply for the boys’ citizenship
by filing an N-600K form for each of the boys, submitting $1,170 along with
each form. Then we will wait for some months to hear back from USCIS with an
interview date in the US a few weeks later, necessitating another costly trip
for the four of us.
This seems like a colossal waste of time and money from our
perspective. We are also concerned about the timing since the boys’ US visas in
their Guinean passports are only valid for one year from the date when we
entered the US with them, which was Feb. 28., and we have heard that the
estimated time it takes for USCIS to process this kind of application averages
9 months. It is particularly frustrating that the US Embassy in Dakar did not
put us on this path in the first place.
But while we were reading USCIS’ letter and researching the
process before us, the boys were giggling and wrestling on the floor with their
sisters… and I was reminded that they have been part of our family for over a
year. They are not orphans living in an institution, begging for someone to
hold them, play with them, give them attention… They have a mom and a dad who
will fly across the world for them (again!) because we love them, and because they
are our sons. This is what parents do. Our heavenly Father has done a lot more
for us! So, we are grateful, and we press on.
Pray with us:
for the peace of the Lord to rule in our hearts
and minds
for His provision of the time and money needed
for this process
for this process to go quickly enough that the
boys’ citizenship papers are issued before their visas expire at the end of
February, or wisdom about applying for another visa if it isn’t going to happen
in time. This is the part we have a lot of questions about…
for stamina to persevere through the red tape,
and joy despite this circumstance
that this process will be completely 100% over
and finished forever soon!
Family photo at our annual SIM Spiritual Life Conference – July 2019 on the coast of Senegal (about a three-hour drive from where we live)
Well done, little one! Your school career is off to a great start!
On Saturday we went to the end-of-year program at the school that our boys attended this year. After some singing, dancing and a skit, the top ten students in each grade (1st through 6th grades) were called forward to receive a prize. When I heard the name of a certain six-year-old girl called, my heart burst with joy! This first-grader had not been to school before, never having attended preschool or kindergarten. Over the summer we had talked to her father, encouraging him to put his two young daughters in the church school and letting him know that the Kaffrine Scholarship Project could pay the $12 monthly tuition as well as the registration fee and the cost of their uniforms and school supplies.
Our SIM Kaffrine Team began this Scholarship Project in 2007
when some mature Wolof Christian leaders from another region of Senegal
encouraged us to invest in the children and young people in the small Christian
community here. Many families can’t afford to pay for their children to attend
school, particularly a private school where the teachers don’t go on strike and
the students can get a good education. So we launched this project which has
helped over two dozen young people at different points in their education, from
preschool all the way to university or job training programs. We have seen the
short-term impact already, and now that the project has been running for twelve
years, we are beginning to see glimpses of the long-term impact as students
graduate, get jobs, and choose to serve the Lord as adults.
We are so grateful to all of you who have given money towards the Scholarship Project. Our young friend who came in fourth in her class this year thanks you for the opportunity to go to school! I am praying that she will go far!
If you would like to help these young people through the Kaffrine Scholarship Project, you can give here. Your prayers and gifts make a big difference!
Pray for a friend who is very interested in the Scriptures; he has just read Genesis and is now reading the book of Exodus. He recently had a dream that seems very significant to us and we are excited to see what God is going to do!
Pray for a water project we want to do to help a village get a solar pump for their well since the generator and pump they have is slowly failing. A consultant came out and we are now waiting for him to figure out some technical details and work up an estimate for us.
Katie and Amanda had hoped to begin teaching a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) class in October but this hasn’t come together yet. Pray for wisdom for us and our partners and for God to draw the right students in His time.
Team
We are so grateful for Bob Japenga’s visit! Bob is an old friend, a mentor, and an elder at our home church (The Barn in Connecticut). He worked with our team here, doing Playmaker interviews to identify our individual motivational giftings and also teaching and leading us in listening prayer. In spite of multiple health and computer problems that disrupted our meetings, we were deeply blessed by Bob’s visit and believe the Lord will use it in our team going forward.
Our teammate, Jeff, had a flareup of a herniated disk in his back during our week of teambuilding. This was extremely painful and extra stressful because there are limited medical resources where we live. Jeff and his wife have gone to the capital city and are getting the care he needs. Pray for complete healing.
Family
All together with Grandma Janie at the SIM Christmas party last week
Praise the Lord that after seven months the US Embassy in Dakar finally issued visas for Will and Jake! We now need to take the boys to the US in order for them to become US citizens. We are planning a four-week trip in Feb/March for the four of us while our girls stay here at school. Pray for the planning and finances for this trip to come together. We are so grateful that friends from our home church in CT have offered us the use of their home and their car while we are there as they will be away during that time. We are so excited that Will and Jake will get to meet their grandparents and aunts and uncles! They are really hoping to see snow… Pray for the boys’ continued adjustment to our family. They are speaking a lot of English these days!
Pray for strength and rest for Corey as he has been working and travelling nonstop for the past month. Pray for good health for Katie. Pray for wisdom and patience for both of us as we parent. Three teenage daughters and two preschool boys… ’nuff said. 😉
We are so thankful to be all together for the Christmas break and to have Corey’s mom, Grandma Janie, visiting! Pray for this to be a sweet time for our family. Keep Emma (16), Molly (15), and Wheaton (13) in your prayers too – for them to thrive at their boarding schools and grow spiritually, personally, and academically.
It has been a very busy six weeks – we were able to go to Guinea to pick up the boys and have been getting to know each other and connecting as a family since then! We know many of you were following on Facebook and praying with us; we were so busy with the boys we weren’t able to get a real Prayer Log update out til now. We are so thankful for how well Will and Jake are adapting to all the change. Every day they learn so many new things – new foods, new words, new games, new rules, new relationships, new experiences! They are kind and sweet and playful and tough and so small and tenderhearted. Their hunger to love and be loved almost breaks my heart as I know they have been missing this kind of family connection for years now. Thank you for your prayers. Continue to pray for the Lord to knit us together as a family of seven!
We still have not been granted a visa interview appointment by the US Embassy in Dakar. Online we just saw today that the Embassy has marked our case “Ready” (There’s a tracking number so we can check on the status of our case, just like you check on the status of a package) but it also says to wait to get an email from them with an appointment date and time. Please continue to pray that we will get an appointment soon and that the Embassy will grant our boys’ visas with no problems. We are so ready for this long bureaucratic process to finally be over!
Continue to pray for our team’s work in the two “new” villages, specifically that the Lord will draw us into relationships with the people He wants to call to Himself and that He will prepare people’s hearts so they will want to read the Bible for the first time.
As God allowed His disciples to perform miracles and healings to confirm the preaching of the Gospel many times in the New Testament, in the same way, pray for the villagers to see the Lord answer the prayers we pray for them in Jesus’ name to confirm that what we are teaching about Jesus is true. One of the couples who have been the most welcoming just had their 5th miscarriage even though we prayed for them to not lose this baby. Pray for God to show them His power and His love and to give them a healthy child. Pray too for those who are sick, that Jesus will heal.
On Friday (June 1st) our team is going to a different village where a Senegalese brother from the church here has been doing Kids’ Clubs with games and Bible stories every week. We are helping him and Pasteur give Samaritan’s Purse shoebox gifts to the children and show the new version of the Jesus film in Wolof on an outdoor screen with a projector run by generator. Pray for this village too and for the seeds that have been sown there over the last year-plus to bear much fruit. Pray that there will not be any technical difficulties with our new sound system and that people will come, watch, understand, and be drawn to Jesus.
"Please help us by praying for us. Then many people will give thanks for the blessings we receive in answer to all these prayers."
About the Garretts
Corey and Katie Garrett have lived and worked in Senegal since 2000 with SIM, an interdenominational, international evangelical organization. They have three daughters and two sons.
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