Court!

Court was yesterday! My heart is happy.  Here's the report:

Dear all,

We are happy to report that today's court hearing for the Pierce family's adoption was successful and the judge permitted the adoption! 

Miroslav (Michael) was asked to enter the courtroom and talk with the judge first of the 3 children, he panicked and was hesitant before the judge so she asked to talk to him again after talking with the other 2 children. He said "Yes" to the adoption when he entered the courtroom again and broke into tears outside the courtroom. He let Maggie (the family's facilitator from trip 1) hug him and comfort him and he was soon OK. He was also very tired since he had traveled by bus since midnight and he shared he had a sore throat and wasn't feeling so well. Miroslav (Michael) and Temenuzhka (Sarah) had a snack at McDonald's after the court hearing (FNA paid the bill - 33 BGN, and the family will just reimburse us for that while here for their pick-up trip). Georgi (John) had to leave after the court hearing since the staff from the institution was in a hurry.

We will provide the family with travel dates for their pick-up trip as soon as we can estimate those. Please be advised that adoptive parents usually travel for their pick-up trips about a month to a month and a half following the court hearing.

Their first time meeting each other!!!!

I have had several people offer to purchase clothing, bedding, etc, so I decided to create a “baby” registry on Amazon. The link is below. Feel free to peruse or share the registry with others. We are, as always, humbled by your generosity! #Bulgariabound #soblessed

https://www.amazon.com/…/jill-pierce-june-2017…/334MVMRRUCZJ

Letters from my boys

We received a letter from Michael. I'm so glad his birthday package arrived - it took 4 weeks to get there.

Dear Mom and Dad, I finally got the package for my birthday and I’m really happy about it. Many thanks for the wonderful gifts you sent me. The weather is very warm, the spring is already here and I am very glad. I go to school, meet friends and spend an excellent time. I want to see you as soon as possible and come to live with you. Love, Michael

John is our most frequent writer of the three kids. He sends a letter almost every week.

Dear Mum, I miss you so much and I am waiting to see you. I want to know when I am going to the judge to finalize the things. I hope that it will be soon. I am doing well at school. My marks are excellent. My English is better and I promise you to tell new words every Friday. How are you? How is Dad. Write to me. John.

We are waiting on one form to arrive and then I will send all the court documents to Bulgaria in time for court. Hopefully we will be assigned a judge soon. I send the triplets a letter with photos (via email) every Monday and Thursday. I'm so thankful we can have this type of communication, along with skyping. #soblessed

Let the 30 day wait begin

Court was 3 hours long. It was grueling. The judge approved the adoption but did not waive the 30 days. And so we went and bought a train ticket for tonight from Nizhny Novgorod to Moscow. We will arrive in Moscow in the morning and will fly home tomorrow. Of course we are disappointed that the 30 days were not waived. However, we did everything we could do and we are rolling with the decision. We are excited to be home with Anna, Keith, & Iryna and will return back to Russia in a month. The 3rd trip should be up to 2 weeks long. Thank you all for your prayers and support. It's been a long process thus far - 14 months - but the end is near in sight and we will have Calvin and Silas home in March. :)

14 visits with Silas

Today marks our 14th visit with Silas. We had a great visit with Silas today. He is very comfortable playing with us now and is making more sounds. He ate some raisinets, threw a ball around, and even did the sign for “more” when his Papa was throwing him up in the air. It was a great visit.

After our visit, we went to SPAR to buy some ingredients. Then Tyler & I watched some ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT before Sveta and Nicolas came over to make dinner. I taught them how to make chicken parmigiana. We also had garlic green beans, angel hair pasta, Italian cheese bread, and I showed them how to make the apple bread pudding. We had a lot of fun talking and cooking. After dinner, we went over paperwork for our court appointment tomorrow. I am very nervous. It could be up to 3 hours long, and other than getting all the wording correct, I won't be able to use the restroom at all during that time. That kind of thing makes me more nervous as I don't consider myself 100% able to prevent my body from needing to use the restroom other than not drinking anything - which leads to dehydration...anyhow, it's a worry. Please pray for us that court will go well. We are extremely hopeful that the 30 days will be waived and then we should be here in Nizhny Novgorod for up to 2 weeks more, gathering paperwork, and going to Moscow to check in to the US Embassy. Sveta is working hard so that we will get everything done as soon as we can so we can bring the boys home.

Pictures from Monday - when I brought some cute clothes in to try on Silas:

His caregiver bringing Silas in to play and his underclothes before changing him into the outfit I brought.

His coat fits! 

Passport pictures. Isn't he adorable??

iPad time. 

Pictures of the play room.

More iPad time.

He looks completely different in these clothes. So cute. And he loved the shoes.

Pictures from today:

My happy boy!

Sveta, Nicolas, and Tyler.

February 9th

We have our court date: February 9th. I just bought our plane tickets yesterday and we leave in less than 2 weeks. SO much to do. We are planning to return the day after the court date. I don't anticipate the judge waiving the now 30 days, but we were told that even if she does waive those 30 days that it will take up to 2 weeks to get all the paperwork together for us to leave. So, for now we are praying that all will go smoothly. I would appreciate your prayers, too.

As you can imagine, with us flying to Russia not once or twice, but three times - expenses are adding up and fast. I have updated our ChipIn on the blog and would welcome any financial assistance that you can give us right now. You can also click here to donate. Since we did not have our court date in December, we will not be able to take advantage of the $30,000 tax refund this coming spring. Instead, we will get a tax credit which won't help us too much. This is another difficulty that we are facing. We had hoped to have the whole Russian adoption paid off with the tax refund. Well, God has other plans and I know that He will help us through this because He has asked us to bring Calvin & Silas home. Any help you can offer would be very welcome.

Thankfully, Danielle can still watch the kids while we are gone. We will be in Russia for 3 1/2 weeks this time, roughly. It would have been less, but because the weather is bad and the roads are difficult - we cannot visit both boys in one day. And so we need 1 1/2 weeks to visit EACH boy prior to the court date. I am happy that things are finally in motion. For now I am trying to clean house and prepare every needful thing for this trip. Your prayers are certainly appreciated!

Change of plan

Yesterday as Tyler and I were going about on adoption errands, we received a phone call from Victoria stating that on Thursday (just the day before) the US made a law requiring another form to be in the dossier. So when Sveta showed up at court yesterday, the judge asked for this form (only one day after this was passed, people). Of course Sveta didn't have the form. We don't know what the form is, actually, but we were told to get the form, fill it out, notarize/apostille it and if Sveta receives it by next Friday then we could be guaranteed the court date of January 23rd. That's right - JANUARY.

The issue is that we can't get it there by Friday, as it takes almost a week for FedEx to get it to Russia from here and we don't even have the form yet, not to mention notarizing it and apostilling it (that takes a day in and of itself). So, most likely we won't be able to count on the January 23rd court date and we have to change our flights ($250 per flight change) before Tuesday (our original date to fly to Russia) but we don't know when to schedule them in January - if it will be January at all. And we don't want to have to pay $250 per ticket AGAIN. Frustrating. Plus this may affect our visas, as they are single entry and expire on March 10th - more on why that may be a problem further in this post.

I do not doubt our decision to buy the visas and plane tickets. We were asked to do so by God and we did it. I do not know the reason, but I can think of many examples in the scriptures of people asked by God to do things that didn't make sense to them. We do not always understand things, but I want to be faithful in all things. A favorite quote that I came up with is this: "A test of faith requires a test." And this is a test, but my faith is strong. We will make it through this.

Today I was shown this link which talks about the 10 day waiting period becoming a 30 day waiting period. If we go mid February and have to wait for 30 days, we will be in country longer than March 10th, hence messing up our visas and requiring new ones (more $). So we would most likely go to the court date, fly home and then fly back - but our visas are single entry, so we would have to get another one. Ugh.

Since we were planning to leave on Tuesday, we had called Santa Claus and asked him to come last night. We decided to keep our appointment with him so last night was technically Christmas Eve for our little family and this morning we opened presents and have had such a great day. I think we needed a little Christmas to raise our spirits. So, Merry Christmas from Tyler, Jill, Anna, Keith, & Iryna!

Arrived

Sveta emailed me to say that she received the form I mailed her today. She is going back to court on Friday. I hope to hear more information then.