This last week has been really discouraging on the adoption front. The court website has been very behind and they had still not posted case notes for cases that were heard two weeks ago. I had asked you guys to pray for case #s 133, 134 and 135 because they were being heard on Aug 14th, but we had no idea if the cases were actually heard (there was a chance the judge wasn't there) and we had no clue when we would even see the notes from the hearings since they were so behind.
I got really frustrated waking up every day to the disappointment of no updates. My friend, Medea, suggested that I not check anymore and let her check for me. She would not say anything unless there was an update to share. It was hard to turn over that control to somebody else but I did my best. It did help me not to get upset at the start of each day.
On Tuesday, I got a text from another adoptive momma whose child is in the same state but a different home. She passed court four weeks ago today and she is still waiting on her written orders. This is taking much longer than either of us thought it would. We thought two weeks max! Well, her orphanage told her they should expect to travel mid November! She passed court a month ago and they don't think she will travel for another 12 weeks! Obviously, she was very upset about this prediction, but it also added insult to injury for me because it's sort of a prediction for all families in our state. I wondered if we would even travel this year! We agreed that we were not accepting this prediction!
Monday I emailed our rep asking for an update. I know that she will call or email if she has news to share but after a month of hearing nothing, sometimes just seeing words on the screen with her name at the bottom is reassuring. You get pretty needy when you go through an adoption. Anyways, on Tuesday I received her response. She said she had talked to the home that morning and they told her they still didn't have a court date but our cases had been filed a while back. They also said things were running slow in our state. I'm not sure if they mean just in court or in general. This wasn't great news when you paired it with the news from my friend's home.
Tuesday was just not a good day for me emotionally. I was very down, but by Wednesday I was gaining some peace again. It seems like every time we get a setback it takes me a day to grieve the loss of time I thought we would have with our girls, but by the next day I am usually much better.
Today, I was okay enough with the situation to blog about our unknowns and discouragements, but as I was driving home from the grocery store, I got a text from Medea that changed this post from no news to HOPEFUL news!
She checked the website this morning and they had updated the website to include the court notes from the hearings on the 14th! Case #s 133, 134 and 135 were indeed heard and they have been scheduled for the "Petition of Evidence" hearing on September 2nd! That's less than 10 days! We are not 100% sure that these are our cases, but here's why I think they are:
A) There are three of them and we have three kids to adopt!
B) There are not that many children in the home, so to process three separate adoptions for unrelated children at the same time would be very unlikely.
C) They were entered into the courts right around the time the home urgently requested some documents from us for court.
D) There have been no other cases entered into the courts for our home recently.
E) The home said our cases HAVE been entered into the courts.
We should know soon if these are our cases because they should name the children in the notes from this evidence hearing. This is the main hearing and the children will be present. There is a very slim chance that this could be the FINAL hearing for these cases, but it's much more likely there will be a final hearing within two weeks.
Assuming these are our cases and based on my friend's experience, I hope we will pass court by mid September. Once we get verbal orders we will wait for written orders which may take 4-6 weeks. I am praying it does not take that long! Once we finally get written orders, the home will apply for the girls' passports which could take 2-6 weeks. Again, I am praying it only takes a couple of weeks. As soon as the home sends us copies of all three passports we will get on a plane within a week! By these estimates, we could travel as early as late October but more likely it will be mid to late November or beyond.
Please pray with us for these three cases! Pray for efficiency and urgency in all areas of this process! I am really praying we can travel before the holiday travel rates kick in (late Nov).
Thank you all for your love and support! I will update again after the 2nd if not before!
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| We ate Chinese last night and this was Lance's fortune. ;-) |
Until next time! -K
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