DENIED US VISA!!

Dear Family and Friends,
Well, we were quite elated on the 21st of November when the Thai Child Adoption Board approved our adoption! Thank the Lord for this victory!! FINALLY!! They even wrote us a letter for Thai Immigration for when Wayne left the country with him and they also wrote a letter to the US consulate stating that his adoption was approved, they agreed to let him go to the US for the 6 month post placement reports, and they also stated the birth parents had signed for him to be adopted.

Wayne had an appointment with the US Consulate on Dec. 3rd but Jedidiah's visa was turned down because they said we needed a Thai Court document showing Legal Guardianship, what we had was not enough!  So we were VERY discouraged, not knowing what to do. Bonnie Sue was due to return to the US on Dec. 6th. However, God intervened and put us in touch with a Christian Thai lawyer, whom we knew, but did not know he was involved in adoption issues. Thanks to Pastor Jonathan Vickers, actually his wife, Judy (!), she called Lawyer Joey and he agreed to see us right away. He spent the next day with us and we gathered documents and photos for him. He had to file the papers the very next day in order to get an appointment for the Court interview. When he went to the office there the following day, everyone had left!! (this was a Friday). However, the very man he needed to see had forgotten something and returned for it. He was able to get us an appointment for next week, Dec. 12th, it was the LAST appointment available until February!! So the Lord really performed a miracle! We are rejoicing so much in that! Also, since Bonnie Sue had to cancel her flight back to the US, she also had to designate a new return date. That was before the court interview appointment was made. So the Lord blessed in that too so that she did not have to cancel twice!! I (Bonnie Sue) have to return to Thailand on Feb. 6th for the Court Proceedings to obtain the Legal Guardianship. Bonnie Sue returns to the US Dec. 17th. Wayne and Jedidiah will NOT be home for Christmas this year, but hopefully, prayerfully, by February!

 Please PRAY that this Legal Guardianship will satisfy the US Consulate and they will issue a visa for Jedidiah, pray for our finances as we were not expecting all these new expenses (change airline flight, Thai lawyer for guardianship, my return flight in February and Wayne and Jedidiah's return flights in February. We know GOD IS ABLE and always causes us to triumph in Christ Jesus!!

THANK YOU so very much for all the prayers and encouragement you have sent our way!

Blessings,

Bonnie Sue, Wayne, Jedidiah and the "tribe"

Jedidiah with white tiger!

HOORAY JESUS!! WE HAVE AN INTERVIEW!

Dear All,

FINALLY! We have an interview on the 21st with the Adoption Board in Bangkok! I will be leaving for Chiang Mai, Thailand, on the 14th and it will be SO WONDERFUL to see my little man and big man after more than TWO YEARS! We will travel from Chiang Mai to Bangkok (about 1,000 miles) the day before the interview. Pray for traveling mercies and for everything to go well with the meeting. Pray especially that the Board will waive the requirement for the 6 month post-placement visits to be done in Thailand and allow them to be done in the U.S.  This will enable us to get Jedidiah a visa for the U.S., and just maybe, he and Wayne will make it by Christmas! Wow, that will be SOME CELEBRATION! Thank you for all your prayers and support. Please continue, especially the prayers!

Blessings and very grateful hearts,
Bonnie Sue and Wayne

GETTING CLOSER!

The Thai social worker called Wayne this afternoon, Thai time, and asked more questions. They were easily answered, Then, Wayne asked her "when" did she think the Adoption Board would review our case. She said "maybe this week"!!! That is VERY good news! After the review, then they will schedule us for an interview. I DO have to go to Thailand for the interview in Bangkok and appear before the Adoption Board as does Wayne and Jedidiah. 

PRAY THAT:

1. The Board WILL review our case this week and schedule the interview quickly and waive the post-placement visits in Thailand and allow them to be done in the U.S.;
2. That all the funds needed for my $1,600 round-trip ticket to Thailand be supplied (I have been able to save about $1,000) as well as the funds need for our trip from Chiang Mai to Bangkok for the interview;
3. Pray that Jedidiah's visa to the U.S. is approved quickly once the Adoption Board okays everything.

I think it just might be a "very Merry Christmas" this year!!!

Praising God for all things, answers to prayer,  and the miracles He blesses us with,

Wayne and Bonnie Sue & "tribe" 

MORE PRAISE!

The social worker did come and do a home visit. She requested that Wayne find the birthmother as she could not, and for us to find an adoption agency that was licensed to do international adoption in Hague Treaty countries. She said that if we could get a statement from them saying they could do the six-month post placement visits, then the Adoption Committee might consider waiving the requirement of the visits being done in Thailand. Otherwise, I may have to return to Thailand for six months for the visits which would be a real hardship on our family. 

Wayne phoned me Friday evening and said that the birthmom had signed the consent forms in front of the social worker. (which we thought was done a couple years ago!) Praise the Lord for that! So now we just have to find an adoption agency here in Texas that is qualified and willing to do these post-placement reports AND pray that the Adoption Committee will allow this so that I do not have to return to Thailand for 6 months. 

God answers prayer!! 

Bonnie Sue and Wayne

GOOD NEWS!

Evidently, things are starting to move! Our social worker phoned Wayne and said she is coming for a home visit tomorrow at 1:30 p.m.! Pray that she will see everything in a positive light and that she will see that he is healthy, well cared for, and loved completely!!

Romans 8:37
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
Romans 8:36-38

2 Corinthians 2:14

New King James Version (NKJV)

¹⁴ Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place.

PRAISE JESUS!

Overdue Update

Well, we are STILL waiting. We have no response as yet from the letters we wrote the King and the Princess of Thailand. Our attorney here in the States found an attorney in Bangkok and referred us to him. He, in turn, referred us to a couple who "assisted" him on cases similar to ours. We contacted them and we have not had any results or much communication from them either. We are praying about another option. Keep you posted, but don't hold your breath!!

We continue to trust in the One who does the impossible and makes miracles happen.

Bonnie Sue & Wayne

"The King and I"......

Dear Family and Friends,


Well, here is the latest:  Wayne said that someone told him they heard of a family whose adoption was also "stuck" and that they appealed to the King of Thailand with a letter and their adoption went through! So we have written a letter to the King and Wayne is getting it translated, then we will have it delivered along with some photos. Pray for God's favor with the King, as His Word says that   He turns/directs the hearts of the kings of the earth. Only the King of Kings can do that!


Also, our attorney, Kelly Ensslin, is also working on our behalf. Right now we are attempting to locate a Thai attorney in Bangkok who works in international adoptions, possibly one who works with an adoption agency there. We hope to hear soon exactly how to proceed to get things moving. The U.S.State Dept. Office of Children's Issues has also been helping.


We continue to trust the Lord and believe He WILL release this adoption decree!
We covet your continued prayer support.


For Jedidiah and those who have no families,


Bonnie Sue and Wayne

Waiting...waiting and more waiting!

Dear family & friends,


One of the hardest things to do is WAIT!! It can be pure agony. Someone once said that "patience is a bitter cup that only the strong can drink". How true!!


We have, at the direction of our attorney, written our congressman and senators concerning our adoption plight.  Additionally, our attorney has contacted the U.S. State Dept., Office of Children's Issues. We are now waiting to hear any news concerning the holdup in Jedidiah's adoption. Please pray that God will move and that soon Jedidiah and Wayne will be coming to us!


Friday, May 11th, Jedidiah will turn 5 years old. I am so saddened that I cannot be with him to celebrate and make him an "Elephant Cake" like I did on his 3rd birthday as he just LOVES elephants!  I told him recently that when he comes I will make him one even if it is not his birthday!! He was very thrilled about that!


Blessings be upon all of you who donated the attorney fees. We greatly, greatly, appreciate your help. Thank you all again so very much.


Believing God fights & wins our battles, 


Bonnie Sue & Wayne

PRAISE THE LORD!

Praise the Lord Jesus for a surprise donation of $1,300 which completes the balance for the attorney retainer of $3,000!!! Thank you, Lord! And thanks to some VERY generous people who must have a huge heart. Thanks to all of you who contributed to this cause. I will keep this blog up so that you may keep informed of Jedidiah's adoption progress. As of yet, we still have no news.


I have posted some new photos Wayne sent me of Jedidiah. The blue outfit is the traditional Thai "working people's" uniform. The red and black outfit is one I sent him via the Meades recently, a "Car's Movie" pit uniform! He loved it especially because it had built-in muscles!!


Awaiting Victory through Jesus,
Bonnie Sue and Wayne

MORE WAITING.....(BIG SIGH)

Our international lawyer, Kelly, was not able to contact the people she needed to as they were in some kind of conference on adoption in Miami. Tomorrow they are suppose to be back in the office, but Kelly said if I don't hear from her by Tuesday afternoon to give her a call. PRAY that she can connect with the right people who can help. 


Wayne has decided to try Jedidiah in a special 3 week pre-school program that is Thai/English. Jedidiah at first acted upset. So Wayne asked him how he felt about going. He said "are you happy about going or are you not happy about going"? Jedidiah took his face out of the pillow he had buried it in and replied, "Both!"  I thought that was an excellent response from a not quite 5 yr. old!! I think Wayne will have a problem dealing with "being alone" most of the day for three weeks and Jedidiah may have problems dealing with "Daddy leaving him" for the day for three weeks! Actually, Wayne already confessed that he will really miss him!! I think they have become quite close buddies!! :) 


Please continue to pray for their release from this bureaucratic nightmare.


Blessings,
Bonnie Sue

MORE WAITING!

Our lawyer, Kelly, has told us that she will wait til the middle of this week (which is today!) and if she still has no response from our social worker or Thai attorney, she will be contacting the US State Dept. to see if they can help. Pray that the Lord will work this all out so that Wayne and Jedidiah can come home!


We still have about half of the lawyer fees, so pray about that too!


The pollution smog is thick in Chiang Mai right now due to the tribal people burning off their land to prepare for crops. Since Chiang Mai is in a basin surrounded by mountains, the pollution tends to linger. Many people get sick from it as well. 


Our dear friends, the Meades family, will be leaving for Chiang Mai, Thailand, in less than a week. They will be visiting Wayne and Jedidiah so I was able to send them both some early birthday gifts! How fun! However, Jedi keeps asking me to make him an elephant cake like I did on his 3rd birthday. He will be 5 in May. I told him that when he came here I would make him one even if it wasn't his birthday!! :)


Awaiting God's deliverance,
Bonnie Sue

TRANSLATIONS!

HOORAY! Wayne got the translations and sent them to our US lawyer! Now the ball is in the court of the social worker and our Thai lawyer. Now we wait and see if they respond.


Like we HAVEN'T been waiting???? :/


But God knows, God sees, and God cares.


We wait on Him,
Bonnie Sue and Wayne

"The Man With The Key Is Gone"....

"The man with the key is gone" is a phrase we often heard in Uganda, especially if someone had to sign something or you had to get some type of official paper. So, it has surfaced again, but this time in Thailand!! :) Ah, yes, delay has struck again! Our wonderful lawyer here in the U.S. has given Wayne two letters to get translated into Thai. So Wayne went to the place where we usually went, the YMCA, to get an official translation of the letters. One will go to our social worker in Bangkok and the other to our Thai attorney. However, when he arrived, the lady who does the translation work is on vacation for a month! So he has pursued other avenues to get this done. Hopefully and prayerfully, this week it will get accomplished!


In the meantime, my wonderful warrior husband, stands with our little son, awaiting the salvation of the Lord!! 


Hallelujah for what HE accomplishes when all else fails!


Bonnie Sue 

A BIT OF PROGRESS....

I received the letters from the attorney and have sent them to Wayne for translation. He should have them back to our attorney by the end of the week. She will then send them to the Thai attorney and our social worker. We continue to praise the Lord for what He is going to do and we stand and wait to see the Lord fight for our cause! (which is really His cause as well!!)


I talked to Wayne this morning and he has a tummy bug while Jedidiah wants to jump all over him and try and wrestle, like they usually do! I told Jedi that he needed to take care of his daddy and be nice to him just like daddy does for him when he is sick. He said "ok", so I will wait and see what happens in Wayne's next update! He did take him to the Night Safari in Chiang Mai over the weekend and got to do Jedi's favorite, which is a ride on the elephant!! He just loves elephants. He is brave enough now to feed the elephant some bananas, which is a big step for him! He also got to feed the giraffes, which is a lot of fun too. 


I guess when he comes to Texas, we might have to get an elephant, I mean, after all, people have all sorts of animals here, camels, lamas, strange looking cattle, etc.!! :) (Just joking, but we'll definitely check out the zoos!)


Thank you for your continued prayers and the gifts given!


Have a blessed day!


Bonnie Sue and Wayne

THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

Philippians 4:19

New Living Translation (NLT)

¹⁹ And this same God who takes care of me will supply all your needs from his glorious riches, which have been given to us in Christ Jesus.

We are so thankful to the Lord and to those who want to join us in bringing our dear little son home! We are almost at the half-way mark to get what we need for the attorney fees. We have received $1,240!! (We need $3,000).


Our attorney is writing letters this week to our Thai attorney and to our social worker in Bangkok. If there is no response in a reasonable time, she has another plan to get the ball rolling!


We are trusting in the Lord to bring this all to a joyous conclusion. Please continue to pray. Thank you, again, and especially to my Home Team at New Hope Christian Church, for your contributions and also others who responded to the blog.


Blessings!
Bonnie Sue and Wayne

HOW IT BEGAN...

Wayne and I met in 1984. We each had suffered painful divorces. Wayne had 3 little girls and I had my four. At the time, I found out that single moms  could adopt and I was in process of adopting, Jessica, then 13, from Colombia. That idea had been placed in my heart by a very special friend, Debbie Bowden, who walked in church one Sunday morning with a 9 month old Korean baby girl! That seed was planted and grew into a whole garden!! 


Wayne and I each had a love for children and also missions, so when we married, we decided to adopt children who already existed rather than have our own. Jessica arrived two weeks before we married and then Wayne and I adopted her together after we married. Next came a little cutie from Korea, Benjamin, at 11 months, who was special needs due to a cleft lip and palate. That was repaired and then we learned about Rani, a spina-bifida child, 8 yrs. old from India who was in the States but needed a home. So Rani came to join our family. Then, we learned about our sweet Josiah-James, from Taiwan, who was only 10 months on arrival and also special needs due to a genetic disorder. About the same time, a friend encouraged us to look into the needs of the Romanian children, which resulted in me taking a group (!) of 18 people to Romania to adopt children in March,1991. I returned on Father's Day with lovely Valentina, her biological brother, rambunctious Nicolae, and charming Alexandru!
They turned our household upside down!! (all were special needs) Around the same time we also were boarding two Ugandan teens (their dad wanted them in the Christian school there) and we learned about the needs in Uganda. Then we discovered private adoption through friends, John and Kathy Purdy, and ended up adopting two beautiful twin girls, Arianna and Annalia, who arrived at 3 days old! Then, in March, 1994, we moved to Uganda, Africa, with 8 of the kids, and started Good Shepherd's Fold Children and Babies Home! God did amazing things and that is another whole story in and of itself. We ended up with about 225 kids! Some still keep in contact with us and three or four of them have started their own children's homes! In 2002, God called us out of there and into Southeast Asia. But before going to Asia, we adopted three more, adorable Yannah, 7 months, sweet Edwin, age 5, lovely Faith, 11, all from Uganda. We were in the U.S. for two years then went to Thailand in 2004 and except for 6 months in Burma, we remained in Thailand. In May, 2007, we took in Jedidiah at 2 weeks of age as he was unwanted by his birth parents and their families. We also took in 4 tribal (Hmong) children for a year until we lost support for them. 


While Uganda was our "mountaintop", Thailand was our "valley" and it has been a difficult journey. In the summer of 2010 we discovered that I needed some medical care which forced me to go back to the U.S. We had been planning on going back anyway but Jedidiah's adoption was not finalized yet so Wayne stayed behind to care for him since we thought it was getting close to finalizing. We had to stop homeschooling 3 of the kids, and could not afford to send all of them to the international school there, so over a two month period, they returned to the U.S. with me. We got them settled in public school, which was difficult for them as they had been used to the close-knit missionary community and Christian school. 


And so....this is where we are now, waiting for the adoption to finalize which just seems to drag on and on. It has been 17 months since our family has been apart! Please pray that the adoption will finalize or our attorney can find another way so that our family can be reunited. We believe we cannot abandon Jedidiah, nor would God want us to. In all our adoptions, there has always been a spiritual battle, so this is not unfamiliar territory. We believe God will be victorious and He is "Semper Fi", always faithful!


His for the Children,
Bonnie Sue and Wayne 

THANK YOU FOR LOOKING AT OUR BLOG!

Thanks to all of you who have come to check out our blog. Our link was sent to you to please remember us in prayer in this endeavor and to give you an opportunity to give if God so leads you. Some of you, we know are not able, but we covet your interest and prayers as you are our friends!

We have a praise as $490 was given through my wonderful and fantastic loving home team!! Another $100 has come in through a dear lady in Lynchburg. We praise the Lord Jesus for His provisions for Jedidiah. Scroll down to read "Our Story".


Bonnie Sue

OUR STORY

In 2004 we went as missionaries to Thailand (after spending nearly 9 years in Uganda, Africa). In May, 2007, we learned about a newborn baby boy born to a young Thai woman. She was going to put him in the government orphanage. We learned about him through our Thai worker. He was 2 weeks old when we received him. His young mom did not want him neither did her boyfriend or their parents. So he became part of our family. In November of that year, 2007, we filed for adoption with the Thai Government. Through many ups and downs, two different Thai attorneys, the adoption is still not finalized. 


In August, 2010, I (Bonnie Sue) had to return to the U. S. for some medical treatment and also get our older children in the American school system so they could be prepared for university. It seemed the adoption was progressing and it would not be long before we would get the final decree. My husband, Wayne, stayed behind in Thailand with Jedidiah as we could not take him out of the country legally since he was not yet adopted. 


It has now been 17 MONTHS (!) that we have all been apart! We recently learned of an international attorney who specializes in "stuck" adoptions. We are in the process of hiring her to see if she can be successful and help bring Jedidiah home. We do not have the means for the attorney fees and so are asking for help. We also request your prayers that God will give her great wisdom and help us be successful and bring my big guy and little guy home!


We are trying to raise at least $3,000 to $4,000. Anything the attorney does not need, she will reimburse. If that would happen, we would donate that to another Christian family who are trying to adopt internationally.


Thank you for anything you can do!


For His children,
Wayne and Bonnie Sue Walker


Isaiah 45:2-3:  "I will go before you and will level the mountains; I will break down gates of bronze and cut through bars of iron. I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the LORD, the God of Israel, who summons you by name."

Our Little Thai Prince

My First Blog Post

Just finding how this works.