Court

Psalm 20:6-9 NIV

"Now this I know: The Lord gives victory to his anointed. He answers him from his heavenly sanctuary with the victorious power of his right hand. Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. They are brought to their knees and fall, but we rise up and stand firm. Lord, give victory to the king! Answer us when we call!"

This morning before leaving for court, this verse came to my mind.  I looked it up and read it over several times. Little did I know how important it was to know this today.  Brent and I arrived at court, anxious, but confident (as we had been told to be) that all would be fine.  The judge asked standard questions about us, our income, our family life, and seemed pleased with the answers we gave.  I was just beginning to breath a sigh of relief when she asked us (via the translator), "Where is your home study?"  What followed was nothing short of total chaos and confusion.  For those who don't know, our home study is the most BASIC piece of adoption paperwork.  The judge had a stack of hundreds of pages of paperwork documenting more details from our life that you can possibly imagine. But, the very first piece of paperwork ever mailed to Russia was our home study.  Without it, none of the other paperwork means anything.  So, when I was asked where it was, my response was "What do you mean?"  I had a copy with me, but it was not an original, and therefore meaningless to the judge. As our interpreter kept drilling me on where it was, I kept asking her the same thing. That document was mailed in to Russia , by our adoption agency, over a year ago.  I started to cry and was quickly told, by the translator, to stop immediately (apparently, showing emotions was not an option at this moment). Brent was in a state of shock.  They kept telling Brent and I that there was no adoption without the home study.  I kept telling them that someone has it (and it wasn't me!).  Neither Brent or I could fathom how we got all the way to court without someone responsible noticing that it had been separated from our paperwork at some point.  Everyone in the court room spoke Russia to each other, tense words were spoken, and we had no idea what was going on. 

In my state of panic, the words of the verse I printed above came to my mind.  I can only trust in God to work this out... for Nikita and for us.  In my state of powerlessness, all I could do was sit and quietly pray.  As I prayed, I thought about how many of you I knew were also praying and found comfort in that. 

In the middle of all of this, I heard the word "Kaliningrad". Kaliningrad is the region of Russia where we were originally supposed to adopt from, before we were re-assigned to Moscow because of the special circumstances of our referral of Nikita.  I asked the interpreter what was going on and she said that someone thought maybe the home study was still in Kaliningrad.  A phone call was made, someone in Kaliningrad drove to her office, and the home study was located!  At this point, we were still being told that the judge could not issue the adoption approval without the home study. Since Kaliningrad was a several hour plane ride away, this meant that there was no way our adoption could be finalized.  We would have to come back or not adopt Nik. I kept praying.   The judge left.  I was told that someone was faxing a copy to the judge from Kaliningrad.  After what felt like an eternity, but was probably only 10 minutes, the judge reappeared, asked Brent and I to stand, and announced her APPROVAL of the adoption of Peter Nikita Bowen to us!  God did a miracle in this and I give Him full credit. 

Due to the 30 day waiting period before the adoption decree goes into effect, we wait until October 19th before he is ours officially. We were told, due to paperwork, the best day to pick him up from the orphanage will be Sunday, October 21st.  So, next month, we will be back to get our son.