Big Day # One!!! One More to Go in the land of Kaz!

Tuesday, June 6

Here we are after court with Marina!

Well Yippee, Yahooee and other exclamations of joy seem appropriate for today! We have finally achieved that much sought after decision from the Judge and Prosecutor that we are A-ok for parenthood. I thought Marina was going to do a back flip when the Prosecutor stood up and said she was not going to oppose the adoption but endorse it. Of course Garrett and I had every confidence that today would go as planned and we were not walking out of there without such. I do not know what we would have done but we were just that confident in the Lord that he would see us through and we would have victory today no matter what. We were even 20 minutes late for court (not our fault) but we were not discouraged by that in the slightest. What a wonderful God we serve that we can pray and believe and walk in confident in how big our God is and not how big the circumstances are! He has truly been so good to us.

Okay so here are some of the details of today’s events for those of you sitting on the edge of your seats waiting for more. When we walked into court the judge asked us one question. He had told our lawyer the day before that he would ask this question which is nice because we could prepare. He wanted to know why we did not desire to adopt babies like most people with no children. Marina said to us in the car on the way over that Garrett and I look very young and she thinks he has forgotten our age, which we all know is way young! She advised us on how to answer. We told him we had been married for 16 years (oh my goodness, is that possible) and had been unable to have children and desired older children to enjoy while we are YOUNG!!! Now we all know that the reason we are adopting children of this age is because Sasha and Stella are the age they are, it did not matter if they were 4 & 6 or 6 & 8 etc….After that he asked the Vice President of the detskydom if she approved of us and of coarse she said we are wonderful and will make great parents for the kids. Then the prosecutor had her say, and she simply said I approve this adoption and have no objections to this couple adopting these children. When she said that, Marina said “Yesssss” to us and had the biggest grin we had ever seen from her and she was visibly relieved. After that the judge said I will give my decision at Noon. It was now 10:40 so we waited in the hallway for the decision, which of coarse was going to be good. We actually waited til 12:40 for the judge to call us all back in. We stood and the judge read his decision which simply said he approved this adoption and approved the names for the kids and other miscellaneous stuff. He also stated the adoption would be final after the 15 day waiting/appeal period which we had been told would not be waived or shortened, but in the great scheme of things this really does not matter, we have the kids, they have us and we are a forever family.

We took a few pictures in the courthouse and went on our way to drop the VP of the detskydom and our attorney off and headed back to our home away from home in Karaganda, Kazakhstan as a real family.

We arrived home and just wanted to eat since we were all very hungry. We ate our lunch that our cook brings to our apartment when we are not at Marina’s at 1:00 (I know, I know, it is a rough life to have lunch and dinner prepared for you everyday, but we manage to get by). After we ate, the kids played “office” and Mom and Dad rested (i.e passed out), can you blame us? Maybe not the big party some might think we would have done but we were all tired, especially Mom and Dad. The rest of the day we just hung out as an official family.

So our next goal is a flight on June 30th. Sounds real good to us! We will take sooner but are praying for not later! Please forgive us for those of emailing us lately as we have been a little busy/lax but will be responding soon. As for now I am the only one still awake but did not want to go to bed without letting everyone know how much we appreciate the prayers. We could feel them today so much. We love you and pray God will bless you and repay you for your kindness towards us these many weeks.

Praise God for His faithfulness and His never ending love that He showers on us every day!