Flash back to my last post. We finally heard that we had been registered for court in S's local District Court.
January 17, 2017 - we had our first hearing but the judge didn't show up. So, our advocate quickly had our case rescheduled for...
January 25, 2017 - and this hearing was with a new judge from hearing #1. This judge refused to accept the evidence of our case because we were not present.
During this time we reached out to ANYONE who could help us to not have to appear in court. A trip to India twice just WAS NOT in our plans...or budget for that matter. But, John and I were willing to go. We were going to suck it up and make the trip just so we could get this over and done with! But, we were told we didn't have to appear for hearing #3 which was set for...
March 15, 2017 - and again, the judge refused our evidence because we were not present in court and a 4th hearing was set for...
April 25, 2017!
Good times, right!? Oh, it gets better.
So skip forward to today, March 23rd...8 days after our 3rd hearing...we hear from our agency's in-country rep the judge wants us in India for THREE MONTHS.
Yes, you read that correctly. At this point..I don't know if I should laugh or crawl in a hole and cry my eyes out.
I'm literally waiting for Ashton Kutcher to pop out and tell us we are on an episode of Punk'd: Adoption Edition...and then we all just hop on a plane because court is actually finished...and sing Kumbaya the whole ride over.
So, right now we are working on having CARA (Central Adoption Resource Authority in India) to tell our judge that we absolutely DO NOT have to go over there for three months. There is nothing in the adoption guidelines that would warrant that.
We have court on April 25, 2017 - and 24 days after that (May 19) the District Court closes for summer break. We are essentially racing a clock here or we get stalled (again) for an entire month.
AND - We have also been told that we DO have to appear at our next court hearing.
So as of now - John and I are making travel plans to be in India for our hearing on April 25th (sooner if we can get it pushed up). I could not even begin to describe the mix of emotions we both have right now. We are obviously excited because WE ARE GOING TO INDIA! And, because we will finally get to meet S!! But, we are filled with so much discouragement, frustration, and just plain sad. Sad that all of this is happening, discouraged that we keep hitting brick wall after brick wall, and frustrated at the whole thing in general. Plus, we will meet S and then have to turn around and leave her to come back home while the rest of the process finishes out.
There is so much going on I couldn't even being to know what to ask for prayers for. My prayers lately have been, "God..you know what is going on. Please just do something amazingly awesome with all of it and let me know where you want me to be when."
We hate having to give everyone an answer of "no news yet!" or "I don't know!" when we get asked questions. Trust me..it's hard for us to have no news or no answers. We will definitely keep everyone updated as we know something!
What DO we know? In 29 days we will get on a plane headed to INDIA!!
