Wednesday, April 14th Final 2 days in Karaganda and we are soooooo glad. Today has been a very BIG day in our adoption quest. At 10:45 AM Iger drives us to the judge’s office for “pre-court” which is scheduled for 11. Gulnara is there and Helen, our new translator, meets us there as well. (Yes, Zhanat, could bear the stress no more and he has quit on us.) Helen was called late yesterday to see if she would translate for us during pre-court and court. Fortunately, Helen had called Gulnara the night before and apologized for telling Gulnara that she could not have her drink near Helen’s computer (Helen’s house rule that made Gulnara so mad the night we were at Helen’s to discuss our case, that we left Helen’s apartment immediately.) Glad that burned bridge has been repaired!
11AM John and I, along with Helen and Gulnara enter into the judges office who sits behind his desk. The judge looks to be about 40 and is wearing a black robe with a fancy collar. His secretary (a platinum blonde asian!) sits across from Gulnara and takes notes as Gulnara explains our case to the judge and shows him pictures of where Kirill had lived for over 2 years. Other than to stand and tell the judge our names we did not have to speak at all!! As I was praying (while Gulnara and the judge were doing their thing), I could just imagine this office filled with angels, ceiling high, who were joining us to watch. And I could picture Jesus , our Great Judge, standing behind the seated Kazak judge, leaning over him as the two of them looked together at Gulnara’s pictures. 30 minutes after we entered, pre-court was done and off we headed to the Dept. of Education office for our interview.
12:30PM Interview with 2 women from Dept. of Education - one of which was present at each of the baby houses at the start of all of this when we were initially shown the children. Because of the scandal that has just occurred in which an American mother decided to “return” her 7yo she had adopted from Russia some time before, we were told to expect much more questioning from the judge in court tomorrow. We quickly state that we feel that what this woman has done is criminal. The officials say that because of this scandal, Kazakhstan adoption bonding time will be doubled to 30 days (instead of the 15 required for us). Questions were asked, such as, “Does any of our family need an organ transplant?” “Why are we adopting when we already have biological children?” “Do we love Kirill?” Evidently, Iger, our driver, had witnessed Kirill running to us yesterday outside the baby house and our interaction with him at that time and he shared this with Gulnara who shared this with these department officials during our interview. That seemed to go over very well. 15 minutes later we were on our way out the door.
Pre-court and our interview could not have gone smoother. Gulnara said that we need to go to Timmertaw this afternoon to obtain a document from the police department. Oh, how we do not want to go back to Timmertaw, especially on our last full day here. We really need to buy clothes for Kirill to wear on his trip from Karaganda to Almaty and onto US. We are running out of minutes. We assure Gulnara that we will be able to find transportation ourselves for the afternoon so she allows us to stay in Karaganda. John and I are afraid we will not be able to get everything done before we must leave for court (scheduled for 11 tomorrow AM) so we are not returning to the baby house today. We will meet Olga tomorrow at 2PM and go together to see Kirill. Olga is Kate’s mom and Kate is who we have been working with at Night Light Christian Adoptions. Olga will escort Kirill, Lord willing, to Almaty and onto the United States in about 4 weeks. Because it is becoming more difficult to use “escorts” now to bring children from Kazakhstan to the states, I may have to return (with Tucker) and bring him home myself. We’ll worry about that one later. So 11AM Thursday is when this final decision is being made. That would be 1AM “at home” time. Before you close your eyes to go to sleep on Wednesday night PRAY, PRAY, PRAY that this judge will say “YES!’
We will try to send out a post when we are waiting between flights in Germany on Friday. If this isn’t possible, we’ll be sure to post this weekend when we get home. It has been so wonderful to know we have friends who care enough about us and about this little boy to follow along on our journey. I will plan on posting a bit each week , so you can “see” how things go as Kirill becomes “Scott” and our family grows by one more.