Natalia and Oxana

Our regional coordinator Natalia and our driver/interpreter Oxana. Natalia is quite savvy and well connected. We're glad she is on our side.

(No, Rob, I'm not bringing you back a hat).

Pieces of heaven

There are a few pieces of heaven in this country. The obvious ones are Nina Deanna, Cholepan, our new friend Maverick, and the other children at the baby house. Tonight I stumbled upon one more. It is a combination of two of my favorite food groups: sushi and pizza. How can this be? Can they possibly be found in the same restaurant? In Kazakhstan, anything is possible and here is the proof.


Now surely this blessing must have been the result of an Italian branching out, or perhaps a Japanese family with a taste for pasta. But that would be too obvious. This speciality is brought to us by none other than the highly underrated, yet most highly inventive minority group in Kazakhstan. You guessed it - the Koreans!

And it was delicious. Thank you for making our night.

Who is that?

This picture is a gift from a new friend who found our blog on-line. This is Nina at 5 months, back in September, two months before we met her, and 5 months before her full head of hair she is sporting today. It is provided courtesy of Stacy Segebarth who does great things like traveling to orphanages to deliver supplies and build playgrounds. You can learn more about her work at http://www.twoheartsforhope.org/ Thank you Stacy for the earliest glimpse we have of Nina! Monte and Rich

Cooling our jets

We have been so looking forward to this day of our court appearance when Nina Deanna would be officially ours (pending a waiting period of course, but this is the last major hurdle). We wake around 4 a.m. to rehearse our speech and organize our paperwork in case anything is called into question.

I wear a jacket and tie, and Monte wears this classy outfit that looks great on her. We are all set. Oxana and Natalia pick us up at 8 a.m. for our 10 a.m. appointment. The snow that melted yesterday has frozen into a layer of ice, and new snow is falling lightly. Our dress shoes are the worst possible things to be wearing but we slip and slide to the car without incident. Monte remains on her feet – no snow angels this trip, at least so far.

We arrive at the courthouse with 45 minutes to spare. Natalia checks to see if the judge is in, but no one is around except the receptionist. She does however confirm that the Austrian couple adopting Cholepan will have the same judge that we have. Their court date should be in a few weeks after the judge ensures the paperwork is in order.

At 10 a.m., we enter the courthouse and wait in the lobby. We give the locals something to look at. We get all sorts of odd looks and long stares. They are wondering why these white folks are here and what we must have done wrong. We are wondering the same about them.

In Kazakh fashion, our session starts 1 hour late at 11 a.m. The female judge enters, and she is joined by two other ladies who sit to our left. We learn that one is the court reporter who takes the minutes on a notepad – old school. We’re not sure who the other lady is, but it seems she is an attorney of sorts representing the state. We are soon to learn that she is our problem. Devil’s advocate or assistant are the nicest terms we can think of so let’s go with DA.

The judge seems very nice and walks us through our rights – that we have the right to ask questions, the right read the minutes, the right to complain – stuff like that.

Then she looks at us and indicates that we need to get started. We assume this means we make our pitch so I head to the podium with my stack of paperwork and pictures in hand.

I thank her for the opportunity, introduce ourselves, and indicate that we are seeking her approval to adopt. I give her our life story in about 30 minutes and cover the following ground (hints provided for future adoptive parents):

- Our first trip meeting/bonding with Nina Deanna

- How great she is and her medical diagnosis (hint: talk about how awful her condition is and your plan for getting her the best medical care)

- How well she responded to us and how much we love her

- Our family history (marriage, Nick, Clint, and Nat)

- Why we cannot have more biological children (hint: the key here was to stress that the mother is older than 35 which is apparently the hard cut-off for having babies in Kazakhstan).

- The long painful adoption application process

- Why Kazakhstan is the best place in the world to adopt a child (hint: talk about how wonderful the bonding process is, the cleanliness and high quality of care given at the baby houses)

- Our plan for providing for all of her needs

o Our house, how we have a room for her

o Our income and how we can afford her

o Our great schools including special needs programs if needed

o Our wonderful parks surrounding our house

o The great doctors standing by in St. Louis ready to care for her

o Our plan and funding for her to attend college

o Our life insurance plan and how we have people lined up to take over if something were to happen to us

- Finally, the plan to maintain her Kazakh heritage

o The journal we’re keeping with pictures of every day in Kazakhstan

o The Kazakh gifts we plan to give her each year until she is 18

o Our networking with other families adopting from Kazakhstan, and special events like Kazapalooza where US families get together annually to celebrate

o Our plan for her to visit Kazakhstan when she is old enough (hint: this of course assumes that bride kidnapping goes out of vogue by then; otherwise, she’s staying in the US)

Believe it or not, the judge doesn’t even fall asleep and seems genuinely interested. The judge then asks Monte to say a few words. She has to be thinking: my husband just rambled on for 30 minutes about everything we could possibly think of – what more can I say? So she plays the crying mother and talks about how sweet and wonderful the little baby is, and how she is already our daughter in our hearts (all honest and true by the way, including the tears).

The judge seems very satisfied and even smiles. We feel very happy about how it all went and are ready to celebrate our new daughter.

But the judge asks DA if she has any questions, and here we go.

She asks if we can afford to raise this baby on my meager salary. I show her my employment letter again with my salary and say, “Yes, I think we can get by.”

She asks if Nicholas and Natalie will be mean to the baby because she is adopted. I say, “No, they are really excited to have a new sister.”

She asks if Nicholas and Natalie will be jealous of her because she is getting attention. I say, “No, they will be too busy being mean to her.” Not really, I say, “No, we don’t see that being an issue at all. They are very excited and secure.”

She frowns at every response. Just when I think she is out of dumb questions, she looks at a picture of Nicholas and Natalie and asks where the picture with the swimming pool was taken.

I say, “On vacation?” and prepare myself for her asking where we bought the lamp in the next picture.

The line of questioning is odd but we’re thinking it is all harmless enough. The judge tells us to sit and we continue feeling confident about things.

The orphanage director is up next, and they have a long discussion in Russian which we could not follow. But we notice DA is quite active in the discussion.

That’s when we get slammed. It turns out that the orphanage director could not get Nina’s mother to come to court to refuse Nina before the judge. However, the director had documentation from Nina’s mother rejecting her at birth, and once again for this court proceeding. Most judges accept this level of documentation, but DA keeps pushing the issue and insists that Nina’s mother appear. We learn that DA said, “What if we give parental rights to these Americans today, and the birth mother comes in crying tomorrow ‘why did you give my baby to the Americans’.”

The judge buys DA’s argument. Court is adjourned with no decision. The orphanage director is given until 6:30 p.m. to produce the mother, and nothing is happening until she shows up. It is time to scramble. The orphanage director suggests waiting until 6 p.m. when the birth mother gets off work to try again. The previous meetings between the orphanage director and the birth mother’s family had turned nasty. The family is ashamed of this entire situation, and just want it to go away. Our coordinator Natalia thinks there is no way the mother will come, and pushes for a more aggressive approach. Specifically, Natalia decides to pay a policeman to go with the orphanage director, along with an official letter from court, to convince her that she needs to show up right away.

Natalia feels that making the request to court more official (or intimidating) is the only way to move forward. We’re not sure what is going to happen. There is nothing more we can do, so we leave the courthouse and go visit Deanna who is wonderful for us again.

Then we get the call that Natalie’s scheme worked. The birth mother and grandmother arrive at court and refuse Nina once again before the judge. We leave Nina and the baby house to head to court, feeling very drained but fortunate that things worked out. When we arrive, we see Nina’s birth mother and grandmother leaving. Our hearts go out to them. This must have been a very difficult day and we see the hurt on the mother’s face.

At the same time, we are hopeful that the judge will rule in our favor now that all requirements have been met. Unfortunately, we learn it is not so. The judge says that she is too busy with her caseload, and tells us to return on Tuesday at 4 pm for the verdict. We are stunned and numb.

We had high hopes for today, but it wasn’t to be. We will pray, make the most of our time with Nina (we get 2 hours each day, Saturday, Monday, Tuesday), and return to court on Tuesday, trusting that God makes it a great day.

Trip 2 Begins

Here are the essentials from our second trip thus far. There is really only one highlight and that is seeing you know who.

The 24-Hour Plan Ride

We do not have the where-are-we-going anxiety of the first trip, and all goes well. We have lots of room on the plane, something like one flight attendant for every 3 passengers. That’s Monte way over there.

We have a 6-hour layover in Amsterdam and decide to head to the city center which is an easy 15-minute train ride from the airport. Monte and I arrive in the city and walk a mile or so in a pleasant snow to see Anne Frank’s house which is now a museum. I make the mistake of asking directions from a man with a hat with a marijuana leaf and “Amsterdam” written on it. Of course, he is a tourist and lost as well. Duh.

We arrive at the house/museum which is where Anne hid during the war and wrote her diary. Unfortunately, the line is really long and not moving – we hit the Tuesday afternoon rush apparently. Short on time, we have to skip it this trip and instead have a brief walking tour and lunch. The snow breaks and we even see the sun.

Monte sees a bunch of interesting things in windows. Here is one of the milder examples.

The Dutch love their bicycles even in winter. Bikes for everyone! (and a boat for a few)

This cat is running the show in this bakery while the baker is away.

Back on the plane, we're thinkin': “Just because they’re in plastic bags, doesn’t make them unused.”

We arrive in Almaty at 5:00 a.m. on Wednesday and speed through customs with the confidence of old pros. We even see some Kazakhstan Olympians returning home with their skis but no medals as far as we can tell.

Our bags arrive and we are looking for our interpreter Anna and driver Adil. Instead, we meet a new gal named Oxana, a triple threat Kazakh Russian of sorts who drives, interprets, and assists in the court representation. We are sad not to see our old friends Anna and Adil, but Oxana is on top of things.

We arrive at our flat which is not as good as our previous apartment (not available), but not as bad as the old farm house (hopefully condemned). No Internet of course. There are small shops to get the essentials within a short walk. We can survive this.

We sleep for 2 hours and then get ready for our appointment with a court consultant who helps us to prepare proper answers for questions the judge may pose. At the end, she casually informs us that we need to make a 30-minute speech to the judge about our history, reasons for adoption, etc. In other words, we need to make our case.

We learn that court date and time is Friday, February 19, at 10:00 a.m. We will spend 1 ½ hours with the judge and leave. In a separate session, Deanna’s mother will arrive at noon where she must sit before the judge and confirm that she is relinquishing her rights as mother. Wow! This is news to us. In the afternoon, we will return to the court and the judge will come back with her decision on whether Deanna will be officially ours. Please pray for Deanna’s mother, for the judge, and that God keeps his hand on this entire process.

Here is an updated timeline (all dates tentative as you know by now)

- February 19 Court date/decision – please pray

- March 8 15-day waiting period ends, apply for birth certificate

- March 15 Birth certificate available, apply for passport

- March 22 Passport available, apply for visa

- March 24 Visa available, ready to come home

After the session with the consultant, Oxana informs us that we are going straight to the baby house to see the reason we came. Oxana may be skilled in other areas but cannot match Adil’s driving ability or speed. While Adil was running at 120-140 km/h, Oxana never goes over 80 km/h and usually much slower. The 3-legged dogs, sheep, and other livestock on the road to Karakastek are safe this trip. I think we were passed by a galloping horse at one point.

Now for the moment we have been waiting for. We arrive late in the day and Deanna must be woken from her nap. They bring her in and she looks great! Her hair is much longer, has a hint of some curls, and is brown with some auburn highlights. It is very thick too, much better than the shaven boy-cut we saw last time.

She has grown so much and seems to be getting along well. She seems very healthy. Her deep brown eyes are as attentive as ever, and her long eyelashes seem to touch her forehead. She inspects Monte’s big buttons on her sweater, checks herself out in the mirror, and laughs and smiles when daddy holds her high.

We are so happy to see her. What a beautiful child! We will return again tomorrow (Thursday) before the big day on Friday. Enjoy these pictures.

Who are these kids in this chew toy?

I remember you.

Got your nose!

I remember you, too. The one with the camera.

Baby Cholepan! The Austrian couple and Cholepan should have their court date set within a few weeks. Natalia was at the court house today, pushing to get a judge assigned. Here she is.

Have you ever felt this way in the morning? Another boy at the baby house who was just selected for adoption.

We cannot wait to bring Nina Deanna home to these two. Next year, there will be 3 Gingerbread houses.

Court date set for Feb 19 a.m.

We finally got the call! Court date is set for Friday morning Feb 19. Need to arrive on Feb 17 to prepare. We are very happy and scrambling for flights now.

Step closer?

Today we learned that our agency's country coordinator, Marina, had her baby girl. And Natalia says we should know our court date by Monday. Of course this means we may know our court date by Monday but it seems things may be moving forward!