Met with the Judge this Morning!

Believe it or not... our most recent hurdle, has revolved around the letter "e." Sasha's original birth certificate had ONE mispelled letter in her last name. This simple clerical error has caused huge headaches for Zhenya and has slowed down our adoption process! Our judge here in Kotovsk, overreacted to the error and made Zhenya's job thrice as difficult... multiple trips, 4 hours south to Atrsez, rounding up 6 different documents! The SDA told Zhenya the judge was being ridiculous. Then Zhenya talked to another judge here in town and he said he would have easily OVERLOOKED the clerical error... a judge who understands the difference between "the letter of the law" and the "spirit of the law!" BUT, our judge held Sasha and Olya's adoption decree in his hand, so we had to jump through his hoops. SOooo, today we accompanied Zhenya at 8:45 AM to the judges chambers, armed with our newest batch of six documents, we appealed to the judge to release our paperwork and let us continue down the road! GOOD NEWS! The judge said, "Yes!" He was satisfied with the work that Zhenya had done and he surrendered our documents to us. Zhenya commented later that there was a definite difference in the demeanor of the judge today. HE HAD SOFTENED! (Thank you Lord... for turning the heart of the judge!)

Tomorrow... the three of us and Yuri, our friendly taxi driver will head south to pick up the "fixed up" original court decree that took parental rights away, get new birth certificates bearing the last name... "WORK" and obtain new social tech numbers!

WARNING: Our return flight reservations for December 23rd are seriously jeopardized because of these unexpected problems and delays. But, we hold out some hope for a literal Christmas day return. But, as our good friend Diane Negi shared with us that she is certain that the Lord will help us to return on just the right day. So we continue to take one day and a time and trust in the words of Jesus, "I will not leave you as orphans... I will come to you!"