Day 20

Well, this has been quite a day. It started early when Mark got a phone call at 7:00 from Livingstone saying he needed him to come with him to meet an attorney. Last night Florence had told us that she ran into someone at church that was a sister of an attorney in Kampala. She was telling her about our story here and she thought her sister might be able to help. Mark went with Livingstone and returned about lunchtime. This attorney was able to secure Mark and Rachelle a court date of June 14. Since neither Dave or I were there, she could not represent us and secure a court date. But, she invited all of us to her home tonight to talk things through. We are giving it until the morning, but at this point we are feeling that God put this opportunity in front of us at the moment we needed some direction, so if we all feel the same in the morning, we will be transferring our documents to our new attorney to represent us. Tomorrow is a holiday here, but on Friday, she will also try to secure a June 14 court date for us.

The way she explains it is that there would be at least two weeks before a second hearing would take place. She said we could request that it be even three weeks if we wanted. That way we could come home for a while in between and then come back right before the second hearing and then take care of the US Embassy stuff. I asked how long that would probably take and she said 1-2 weeks.

The USCIS office doing the orphan investigation has given us a deadline of June 20 to supply the requested information, which includes final court documents, which does not look like it can happen at this point. So, I emailed our congressman's office today that has been helping us to ask for an extension.

While it seems like every turn we make we hit a roadblock, we are trusting that God has a plan in all of this and he has answered many prayers while we have been here. The court system is just completely unpredictable. And, unfortunately, our attorney Peter has not been able to accomplish much on our behalf. Sara, the new attorney was able to do more in a few hours time than Peter has done in 3 weeks. Mark has decided to wait until Saturday to leave so that we can get things planned out a little more with our change in representation.

Our hearts are split in between home and here right now. It seems like we have been here quite a while now and are missing home...Tyler, our family and friends...the phrase there is no place like home is taking on a deeper meaning for us as we realize how unbelievably blessed we are to have you all in our lives (not that we didn't already know how important you all are to us) and the comfort that home brings. And, then we have this little girl here who we have fallen in love with and have to bring home. We talked about it again today how only God could have plucked this little girl out of the middle of Africa for us. She was just meant to be ours.

It is after midnight here, so I will end this for now. Thank you for your prayers once again. Please continue to pray that we will see God's path clearly before us and that we will feel His peace as we navigate through this process.

Love you all!

Sara and Dave

Love you and miss you Tyler! We are counting down the days until we see you! XOXOXO