Serious Prayer Need!

Following the final adoption order for Eli, we applied to Home Affairs to change his name (as ordered by the court) and at the same time applied for a temporary passport in his pre-adoptive name in order to allow him to accompany us on our trip to the UK in June. Home affairs were incredibly helpful and got the passport to us within 7 days but informed us that the name change takes up to 4 months (so will happen by August at the earliest).

Two weeks after we applied for the temporary passport, the British Govt. very unhelpfully announced that South African temporary passports would no longer be accepted for entry into the UK. This has put us in a very difficult position as it is simply not possible to obtain a full passport for Eli until after the name change has been completed.

We have made many fruitless calls to the British High Commission in Cape Town and Pretoria in the last few weeks and eventually yesterday we spoke to a human being who confirmed that SA temporary passports are indeed "not credible travel documents" and therefore Eli cannot travel on his. We explained Home Affairs position of being unable to issue a full passport, so it was suggested we get a letter from Home Affairs confirming this. Again, Home Affairs were brilliant and faxed the letter immediately.

This morning we were informed that the High commission have considered our case and have refused to issue any travel documents! We kept asking them what we should do, but were banging our heads against the proverbial wall. Eventually we were advised to appeal directly to Paul Boateng, the High Commissioner which we have done today.

This problem is totally of their making and yet no one seems willing or able to help us. This is incredibly frustrating and infuriating!

Please pray that common sense would prevail and the High Commission would allow Eli to travel! We will be flying to the UK on the 8th of June.

Also, if you know of anyone who has direct contact with Paul Boateng, please let us know.