Prayer Requests for Court

Today we were at the orphanage visiting Rance when Yuri, our facilitator sent us a text...at 5:10.

"Hi. I am still waiting for the approval from the SDA. It is waiting to be signed now, please pray."

The SDA closes at 6, and it was supposed to have already been done, I knew something wasn't right. I felt sick to my stomach. Without the SDA approval we couldn't go to court. We would have to reschedule court for Thursday...two more days of waiting...

I begged God to move on our behalf. I know its only two more days, but after the past two days which have been extremely difficult, I couldn't think about waiting two more days.

I had not stopped petitioning God with our request, it was past 6, we had said good bye to Rance and were on our taxi ride back into the city. I knew Yuri should have called by now, so I began to prepare myself for another delay.

Finally the phone rang. Apparently a document that the SDA had needed to write their letter of approval was missing. Praise God Yuri was able to somehow take care of it, get the SDA to complete their letter of approval, and get it signed by 6.

With a sigh of relief I began to thank God and praise Him for working and moving on our behalf. All of our documents are completed, and we get to go to court tomorrow to legally make Rance ours!

When Oleg met with the judge to go over our paperwork and set up the court date he also asked about the possibility of waiving the 10 day waiting period, at least letting us start the paperwork. The judge said no on all accounts.

However, Yuri has again asked Oleg to speak to the judge tomorrow before our court session about the 10 day waiting period. We realize there really is no chance of him waiving the 10 days completely (it is technically illegal), but we are praying the judge will go ahead and allow us to start on the paperwork for Rance (changing his social security number, getting a new Ukrainian birth certificate and a Ukrainian passport).

Our 10 day waiting period will start on Wednesday the 19 and end on Friday the 28. There has to officially be 10 full days in which people have the option to appeal the courts decision, with the 28 being the tenth full day. This means we wouldn't  be able to pick up the official court decision until Monday the 31. Without the court decision we cannot pick Rance up from the orphanage or start any paperwork (unless the judge gives us special permission as I mentioned earlier).

So, prayer requests:
-Pray that the judge will completely waive our 10 day waiting/appeal period.

-If not, pray that the judge will at least allow us to start paperwork during the 10 day waiting/appeal period.

-At least, pray that the judge will allow us to get the court decision on the 10th day of the waiting/appeal period, so we won't have to wait all weekend to get Rance.

Court is tomorrow, Tuesday January 18, at 3pm our time, which is 7am in STL. Oleg will be speaking with the judge before our court hearing about the waiting/appeal period options.

Thank you for praying with us. We will update tomorrow around 8pm our time as we will go directly from court to the orphanage to visit Rance.