Love, Faith and Vova

We left you with a cliff hanger, because that's what we have been living.

The Hollywood moment: Two beleaguered parents, walk into the Prosecutor's office to fight for their children. They have three secret weapons: Love, Faith and Vova.

We have been overwhelmed with so much here and quite a bit of it is negative! Ok, most of it is negative! But fortunately, we have our Au Pair's brother, Vova (Vadamir) with us, and he is a believer. He has been wonderful and very positive throughout our stay here.

After the court hearing, and a finding in our favor, we went through six days of trials. The orphanage filed an appeal against the finding and we were turned away from the orphanage two times by the staff when we went to see the kids. The staff then turned the kids and their classmates against us for several days. When forty, 6-8 year olds, all ignore you, you know something is wrong, because these kids don't have much to do but check you out when you enter the door!

On Wednesday, our protector and friend, Ruslan, introduced us to two lawyers (one a former prosecutor) who both talked to us for an hour and a half and gave us legal advice and the courage to go into the head prosecutor's office on Saturday morning to discuss the appeal filed by the orphanage. This is so far outside of normal adoption process our facilitators were very worried.

We arrived and were escorted to the office of the head prosecutor, a man in his 40s and very professional. He told us right away that he knew why we were there and that the orphanage had told them that we had not made any positive contact with the kids and that the kids didn't want to go to America. We were shocked he believed that! But after about 15 minutes of explaining our side, and Vova filling in some critical information that he had seen with us these last few weeks, Vova started to translate an apology and that the head prosecutor, he now understood, and that he would drop the appeal all together.

Apparently, when the head prosecutor heard that the orphanage staff is mainly concerned that the orphanage would be closed if the class sizes kept slipping in the lower aged classes that our kids are in. (the head prosecutor confirmed this to be true with his two Deputy prosecutors in the room and one that was in the court room with us on Monday via a telephone). He became very angry at the orphanage director. "I have been made a tool" for trying to use the Prosecutors Office for their own ends.

We also learned that the director had told one of the prosecutors that she did not like military members and that was another reason she was not supporting the adoption! When this came up, the head prosecutor was surprised as he thought that being military members would be good as we would provide order for the children. So Vova added that not only were we military members, but we are also strong believers! And that really made the head prosecutor change his mind!

It also didn't hurt that Vova told them that the Director of the Orphanage had told us that she was against adoptions! She pointed out to us that these children have "Bad genes." We shared many photos we keep in our photo book that shows the kids on our shoulders, in our arms, smiling and laughing with us throughout the time we have been here really made them see that we are all getting along well.

Heidi just told them that the only question the children were asked from day one, and that continues daily (in a harsh adult tone from the orphanage staff) has been - "do you want to go to America?" Instead of - "here are some people that would like to get to know you and be your parents, they will be here to spend time with you and get to know you. Have fun and enjoy their company!" Never have they asked, do you like these people? Do you enjoy spending time with them?

So the head prosecutor got to hear both sides of the story and fortunately he believed the truth!

We now have four more days to wait and then we go on Friday to get the final court decree and continue to get the birth certificates, passports, and get out of town and this country!

Please continue to pray for this situation as the children are being told untruthful things (we know that they have not been told that we were granted the right to adopt them by the judge) and that we even believe that the children are being treated badly and their classmates are being punished as well.

As for the fourth child, Maxim, we saw him on Saturdat and he is fine. (Although we noticed approximately twelve big boys smoking along side the building when we came and two other boys were hitting a boy that looked so much like Maxim that Heidi was prepared to jump out of the moving car as we drove up thinking it was him being hit.) We did realize that it wasn't him, but we still are ready to get him out of there so much!

Maxim's last comment to us before we left was again - "when will you come and take me?" We will see him again in the next few days and then hope to get him out of there for good over the weekend!