Good News, Bad News/Prayer Request

Sorry if I haven't posted in a few days. Jasmine has been hogging all of our free time on the computer to do AP English assignments.

Tuesday I went to court for Julius. I saw the judge and the hearing went well. Unfortunately, though, she gave me a ruling date of Sept. 21, 2010! The lawyer told her I would be going there this Thursday Sept. 9 for Jessica's ruling and asked if we could the get the ruling then, but she said she was too busy. So now it has been suggested that tomorrow morning when I see the judge to get Jessica's ruling, that I raise my hand and ask her to please give me Julius' ruling sooner, perhaps Monday Sept. 13.

The good news is that our orphanage has a good relationship with the clerk that types up the rulings, and so our friends' was done in 2 days instead of the usual week.

Our friends contacted the embassy today to find out if they had their paperwork (we already know they have ours) and found out that contrary to what we have been told, which is that you cannot make an appointment to begin the visa process until you have the typed up ruling in your possession, the embassy actually wants to see us tomorrow after the ruling to begin the process. There is an orphan investigation that takes time and they want to get that started and review all of our paperwork. They said the process takes 2 weeks from the day they first meet with you to having your visa. So it is a good thing we found this out now and are starting the process!

The kids are doing terrific. After an extremely long day that began at 5:15 with a cockroach in the bathtub, and continued with our ride to court being 40 minutes late (I could have been sleeping!), the hearing, getting Julius' passport photo taken, lunch, and the loooong ride back, we returned to the home to find Jessica getting her hair done. I had requested this, but the problem with people not speaking the same language is that things get misinterpreted. I had assumed that they would do tiny braids or ponytails. Instead, they gave her yarn twists, which are adorable, but took 6 hours to do! She had been sitting all day! This was also the kids' first night to spend the night with me. So after dinner and a bath, they went to bed. Jessica cried a little, which seemed sort of like crocodile tears--loud wailing instead of the silent tears she had shed before when she was truly upset. It didn't last too long and she fell asleep and slept all night. Julius, who had only napped for one hour all day, carried on talking and scraping the mesh sides of the portacrib with his fingernails for about 45 minutes. He slept until about 4am, when his loud thumb slurping awoke me. It sounded like he was about to wake up for a bottle, which I had prepared before going to bed, so I gave it to him. That went fine, but what followed was about an hour of snuffing, snorting, coughing and loud breathing due to congestion until he finally quieted down. Both kids woke around 7:15 am in happy moods.

So the prayer request is that the judge is willing to bump up the date of our ruling! And for courage for me to politely and graciously ask her!