it's official

We are the legal guardians of two little Ugandans-soon-to-be-Americans!


After waiting in the court room for about an hour, taking a lunch break, and waiting another hour in the attorney's office - we got a text from him announcing that we had a favorable ruling! We didn't see him at all yesterday, and we were starting to feel nervous about the verdict or think that something happened with Ibra's letter. Thanks for your prayers - depending on what the letter from Ibra's local council said about his birth certificate, we could have had to wait until December for the approval.

Our next steps here are:
1) Wait for the American embassy to complete its orphan investigation.
So, I appreciate the fact that they do this, but I'm not sure why this doesn't happen prior to the referral and the court ruling. Some families that we have met through the adoption process at Suma's home could have greatly benefited from this (pray that their daughter is established into their family). But once we get this back, we'll go on to step two....

2) Apply for the kids' Ugandan passports.
We will legally adopt them once we return to the US, so for now, they will have passports from Uganda.

3) Apply for the kids' American visas and complete the visa interviews.
We found out yesterday that Ibra's great-aunt will need to come in for this. No problem with this, but I'm not sure why it's necessary if we have a favorable court ruling and everything else in order. We'll ask our agency.

4) Come home!


We still have a good amount of waiting to do, but we are happy to be on this end of the wait! We're also excited to be home all together, and to be within walking distance of the American Recreation Association (ARA)...we can go swimming, play at the playground, and all kinds of fun things.

Since we got the ruling yesterday, we were able to bring Suma home with us. I am so happy that we can all be together - finally! I can't hide it, though, it was a rough first night with Suma...

When Ibra came to stay with us, we could see that he was a little uncertain about everything. He was pretty quiet, but he didn't fuss or cry. When Suma came to stay with us, it was an entirely different ball game. As we drove home, we passed the turn to her children's home. She pointed at it and looked surprised, but didn't fuss. When we got home, we showed her where she'd sleep, had dinner, took baths, put on our PJs...and then she started saying it was time to go. Oh no. When we put her in bed, she started wailing. Although we and the aunties at her home told her what was going to happen, it was obvious that she didn't really get it. Her crying set Ibra off, and we had two wailing children.

Side note: homes in Uganda do not have carpet - it's all tile because of the dirt. So guess how that made the noise echo! Yes, it was super loud and I'm surprised that all the neighbors didn't come running.

So we took them to separate rooms to rock them and calm them down. After 30 minutes, Suma was quiet, so I thought it would be safe to move her to our room and put her in bed. Not so much. She woke up again and began to sob for her auntie Eva...it broke my heart to see her grief.

Ibra came into our room, and he is such a good big brother. He laid down quietly next to us, and sometimes he would talk to Suma in Lugandan or hold her hand.

At this point, Suma had been crying for over an hour, and there were no signs of her calming down. At all. I was crying too, stressed and wondering if anyone was going to sleep that night. Fortunately, my husband is awesome. He brought her some milk and said, "Since this isn't working...why don't we turn on a movie and see if that helps calm them down." Both kids have a fascination with motorcars, and I'm so glad that we got "Cars" before we came. It worked like a charm. Suddenly, all tears were replaced with squeals of delight, and they cuddled up with us to enjoy the movie. Thank you, Lord.