We Have A Court Date!!!

I went on a Faithwalk weekend this weekend.  As a side note, it was AMAZING! and I highly recommend anyone who has never done a Faithwalk type experience to sign up!  Anyway, part of the weekend was no phone, no computer, no watch, etc.  Chris was actually able to get one piece of info. to me.  Our court date.

Having the date was amazing, not knowing anything else, not so much!

Anyway, let me tell you what we know.  We have a court date for Nov. 5.  They have asked us to be in country four days early...that means we will be traveling on Oct. 31, Halloween, wow!  We have two and a half weeks to buy plane tickets, find substitute teachers for...everything, get our girl a wardrobe, gather documents, get money, plan school, figure out how to keep the kids home schooling while we are in another country, find Halloween costumes for kids, find people to take the kids for Halloween, gather costumes for the musical Lilly will be in (that we will not be here to watch), etc., etc., etc.

We may or may not be slightly overwhelmed!

We are super excited and cannot wait to see and meet and hug and love on our precious little girl.  However, I would be lying if I didn't confess to being both scared to death and stressed out completely. Our biggest issue is when to set up travel dates.  I know this is going to sound crazy...but Nana and Papaw's Christmas to the family is DisneyWorld.  The tickets are for Dec. 10-17 which means we are to leave town Dec. 8.  Nana and Papaw were so gracious to do this for the children and the children are so excited.  However, the stateside representative for the orphanage has told us to expect to be in country 4-6 weeks and he has NEVER seen it happen faster than 5 weeks.

So, here is our dilemma.  If we postpone the court date, it will be no sooner than the middle of January due to the courts taking a break (something they evidentially do quite frequently).  Doing that will mean we will be out of the country for Lilly's birthday.  If we keep the court date, we will get to meet our sweet girl and spend time with her, but there is no guarantee she and I will make it back to the U.S. in time to go to Disney.  I know that seems like a very small thing, but Chris' parents were SO generous in getting the tickets and the thought of just not using them is awful.  The older children are also very worried about me not going (they know I will ride the scary rides with them)  Usually they are trying to get away from Momma so the fact that they really want me there makes me want to move mountains to be there.  The third alternative is to go for the original court date, return to the states and go back (again the middle of January) and get our princess once immigration stuff has cleared.  This is a tough option because I cannot imagine leaving that sweet girl once we have been granted guardianship AND it would add quite a bit of expense that we have not budgeted for.

So, we have decided to go forward with the original court date and start praying.  The possibility of getting guardianship AND immigration and getting back to the U.S. by the beginning of December is, in reality, not very possible.  BUT, we do not serve a God who is limited by possibility.  We serve the God of the impossible.  So, we are asking our friends to start praying for us.  We are praying that the judge will listen to our case and rule favorably and quickly...we have heard that sometimes they purposely drag things out.  We are praying that an immigration miracle will take place and that our paperwork will go through quickly, be approved and we will be able to travel by the first of December. This will be unheard of, what an opportunity for God to show up!

If things do not work out, I will probably fly home the first of Dec. to be with the family at DisneyWorld and fly back to Uganda in January.  This, of course, is not our favorite choice and will require some additional fundraising, but it is a possibility...I just don't want to miss Lilly's birthday!

So, prayer warriors, wanna be prayer warriors, future prayer warriors, and anyone else who prays.  We are asking you to bombard Heaven on behalf of our family for a miracle.  We are asking you to plead our case before the Judge of all things, King of kings, our Father in Heaven.  No matter what happens, we know He is faithful and His mercies are new every morning and His timing is SO much better than ours.  So we pray that His will is done and in all things all glory and honor and power belong to Him!