Court Date --- WE HAVE ONE!!!

Quick post to update you on the latest

(& to take a break from the packing lists)

We received our Court Date last Monday, February 27th

OUR COURT DATE IS

MARCH 29TH!!!

What all does this travel/step look like practically?

We will leave Omaha on the evening of March 20th to head to the big AR.  

The kids will be staying with family there - so grateful!

Travel looks like this:

March 22nd: We fly out of Little Rock & land in DC for the night.

March 23rd: We fly out of the DC airport on a nonstop flight headed to Ethiopia.

March 24th (on Ethiopian time now): Land in Addis & take a 6 hr van ride south to Nora's home region.

March 25th : Spend day in her home region & take 6 hr ride back to Addis

March 26th:  MEET OUR DAUGHTER

March 27th & March 28th: Timed allowed for visiting with Nora - the rest of our time will be divided amoung many things but we haven't made specific decisions yet as we are waiting on the final travel packet.

March 29th:  COURT & fly home

March 30th: Land in Little Rock

Purposes of this step in the process:

• We get to meet our daughter -- AND WE ARE SO READY TOO!
• We will go to COURT for her to become legally ours on this trip --- we hope:
• We will have paperwork submitted to MOWCYA on March 6th (their time - evening of March 5th our time). 
•  If they write us a favorable letter of recommendation, our possibility of passing court while we are there is great.
• If MOWCYA doesn't write a favorable letter immediately, we may or may not pass court while we are there.  The reasons they may not write a favorable letter does not pertain to us so much as it would to them wanting more information on the orphan status.
• We could get to court and the judge decide they want more information of some sort, etc & that could keep us from passing as well.  
• We get to learn more about her home country & more about her specific region as well!

That just about sums that whole court trip up for now!  I have had several people ask what that part of the journey looks like, so I thought I would just type it up. As you can tell with just this in general summary, there are still so many things "up in the air" at this point.  There are many things we can take before God and ask Him to have favor on.  We ask that you join us in  doing that please.  The prayers of a righteous man are powerful and effective.  

Prayer Requests:

• We ask for you to remember our case in prayer specifically on the evening of March 5th our time as it will go before MOWYCA and that they will write a favorable letter for us.
• We also ask that you pray specifically for our time of meeting Nora.  She is a shy, easily scared kiddo.  We believe that God can soften her heart to trust & not be fearful of us.  We are prepared for the fact that she may be, however, I want to pray for her little heart and mind to not have to suffer that time of fear.  We want her to know how loved & desired she is.
• We also ask that you lift up our court date specifically as well & that everything will be presented orderly and that all of our documents will be correct and present at the time of court.  We pray that the judge passes our case and deteremines us as Nora's Daddy & Momma for the rest of her life on that day!!!!!!
• We also ask that you begin to pray for the time between court and embassy.  At the end of this trip, we fly back to the states without her, which will be hard on us and on her.  There will be several weeks (average right now is closer to 6 weeks) before we will travel back to pick her up and bring her home with us.  If you can only imagine all the heartache and mental confusion that could be there for her.  We pray she somehow knows & is comforted in knowing that she has a Father who loves her more than we ever can that is near her at every moment.  We also pray that our time between court & embassy will not be the full 6 weeks as it can be as short as 2 or 4 weeks.  This would be wonderful to not be away from her so long after meeting her the first time!!!!!

Again, I hope to present a post sooner than later on what our attachement/bonding season will look like, but for now, we are trying to gather all of this steps information and prepare to travel!