May 9, 2011

One year ago today was amazing! We got word in the morning that we had our court hearing scheduled. We went to the courthouse first thing and waited, watching as many arrived for work. We saw the judge arrive, and he is intimidating, wow about 7 feet tall, commanding presence, we couldn't believe he pulled himself out of the little car. We did get in to see him pretty quickly compared to all the waiting we had done in country. We entered his office with one of our poas, we knew many of the things we needed to mention in our request, and after all this was translated the judge asked us a few questions. When he asked about our son I pulled out the referral picture to show him and he smiled and asked if he could see it, it was fun to hand it over to him for a few minutes. It was a formal meeting but he obviously enjoys these types of meetings. At the conclusion of our meeting the judge said we could return at 2pm for our ruling, we were so excited to hear that same day.

Isaac played a bit on our visit today:

We just fell more in love with his sweet face each day:

After that we went to the ministry, some families were requesting their final letter needed for travel and one family was waiting for their referral, so we were requesting that all these letters be provided on this day. It was a long wait out in the courtyard, between speaking with our case workers and other staff, filled with prayer.

We returned to the courthouse for our ruling that afternoon. This was different than the previous group. We were asked to sit in for the court ruling to be read. We entered a new building in the back, off the tiered area we sat the week before. We felt like we were walking the plank as we descended some wood ramps and some stairs, past many shelves of box after box of files. Then we were in the courtroom, we sat on benches facing 2 tables on a raised platform in the front. The judge and an assistant entered and were sat at the tables. It was a really cool experience. There were 5 groups in the courtroom that day. For each group it was pretty much the same. The assistant called out our names, we stood and walked to stand in front of the judge's table. The judge then read out in french the entire ruling, while the assistant was writing it all in the native language of Rwanda. We had no idea what was being said so we just stood as respectfully as we could and listened. When the judge stopped speaking we weren't sure what was next and he must have noticed, he lowered his voice, leaned towards us and waved his hands as he said "it is done." He smiled at us and we were beyond thrilled. Isaac was now legally our son :) And we had such a fun experience. Today marks the 1 year anniversary of his adoption!

We didn't get a photo with the judge this day, he was really under the weather and we were so thankful for his time already, but here is a photo with the judge when we had our ruling for our re-adoption in Idaho:

It was a much longer wait after, as we needed to receive the documents of the court ruling. We took these directly to the ministry to be submitted so we could also request our letter for travel. We also gave them copies of the passport pictures we had printed for the group while we were waiting at court so they could be used for everyone's "to whom" letters. We did not get the letters on this day but we would be able to have custody tomorrow since we had received our court ruling today.

These photos were hard to get, we had to have them just right with each kids' face straight on, both ears showing, we ended up needing more for passports, but this is what we submitted for our letter at the ministry:

This was an amazing day, but we did so much running around and just the craziness of the day tired us all out so much, we had a quiet night at the hotel. We had some pizza in our room with the Stengels (we had adjoining rooms) from our favorite place and just relaxed, enjoyed the progress of the day and discussed our hopes for the next day.

Happy Adoption Day!

Sheri