It's been awhile. Everytime I think I should update you all on our adoption, I never know what to write because, frankly, things have been a confusing mess for quite some time. So here's the short [sort of] version..
After we were told that adopting Faith and Stecia wouldn't be possible, we were almost immediately referred to another 2 year old child named... Shakira (yes, as in 'My hips don't lie'). Her mother was homeless, pregnant, and recently widowed. Kira was taken into social services and placed in an orphanage via her mother's request. Things looked very promising for our adoption of Kira for awhile, but, then we were told that the government sees international adoption as a sort of "last resort" and wanted all family members to be documented as deceased. Since finding Kira's mother was next to impossible, we were told (again) that it would not be possible for us to adopt Kira.
As if we like roller coaster rides, we were very quickly referred to yet, another child! Violet is 3 years old and lives in a village with a family that has multiple children that they look after. Several of these children are orphaned. Since both of Violet's parents are documentedly deceased, things progressed quickly and it looks promising that we will get to bring her home. For the last two months, we've been told almost every week that it would be possible for us to get our court date. And yet, each week would end and we would have to tell our family and friends that they would "try again next week." Then, a judge in Uganda asked our agency if we would be interested in bringing home a SECOND child... Although it seems like we went through this with Faith and Stecia, things look promising that we could be bringing home two three-year old girls!
We were hoping for a court date in June because of my job. Since I teach, I wanted to miss as least amount of school possible. Then, yesterday, we finally received our court date. On August 24, we'll be appearing in court with little Miss Violet to become her legal gaurdians! We're super pumped, even though the timeline was not what we thought it would be. As far as child #2 goes, we still don't know if we'll be able to bring her home or not. We'll see as the summer goes on. AND, since I'm pretty much unemployed right now, I'll actually take the time to sit down and update you fine people :)
It's been a rocky ride this semester with the changes of our children and waiting and waiting for our court date, but we're so happy to finally have a concrete court date. The date they've chosen works out terribly for my job, but oh well, God has a plan and I'm just happy to be part of it.
Once again, thanks for all your support, ecouragement, and prayers! :)
Derek and Kristen
