Day 7 - Court Date #2

We were hoping to be writing with good news and going out for a celebratory dinner. Unfortunately, this is not the case. We had our court appointment at 4 p.m. and again did not receive a favorable ruling. We could tell things were not going well from the start. The court demanded that the baby house director attend the proceedings to address the court's concerns about how many other families have seen Deanna. The law requires that local families have first dibs, and the baby house had only documented two families that had seen and rejected her. The court was questioning if these families were real or made up.

Court did not start until 5:15 p.m. The baby house director went first and confirmed that two local families did see and reject Deanna. The judge seemed happy with that. Then DA was at it again, arguing that two is not enough, and that more local families must see and reject her. The law does not specify a required number of rejections and the baby house felt that two documented rejections was enough.

The judge then asked if we had anything to say. We were stunned, hoping today would just be a formality since the mother showed on Friday and we understood that to be the only issue. But saying nothing would have been very bad, so I stood up and started. I said that Deanna was a Kazakh girl by nationality, but also a Kurdish minority with a Russian father. She had been rejected by her mother, family, and community, and no local families will want her given her ethnicity. But we want her as our daughter, and love her with all her hearts. And that we will provide a loving family and great future for her, while she has no future here. This is all true, and we know the judge knows it. But it seems this is more a matter of politics than logic.

We then reiterated our request, expecting a decision right there as promised.

Instead, the judge said she would make the final decision Thursday at 3:00 p.m. After court, they said we could leave tomorrow as planned and have Natalia represent us on Thursday. And the court administrator tried to make us sign a paper saying that we had received the decision already. She argued that we must sign since we were leaving. We refused and said we're staying.

Before our court appointment, we had about 30 minutes with Nina to say goodbye before our planned flight tomorrow morning. I held her close and looked deeply into those big, dark brown eyes. She stared back at me and I promised her that we would return to her and bring her home no matter what the judge said today. I know she could not understand the words, but I believe her heart heard me.

Please pray that God allows us to deliver on that promise on Thursday. In the meantime, we're licking our wounds and preparing a final statement for Thursday while Natalia tries to work some magic with her contacts in the background.