We Won!

So, Sunday night, the full court press. Our facilitator, Max, sat down with Sasha and Christina to go over the pros and cons of court.

We had known that the middle children where becoming an issue. It was not that they did not like us or trust us, it's just it was so far outside their safety zone that they felt they did not want to leave their friends, and routine here for the unknown.

Some of the things they had been told: "you will be stabbed," "you will be turned over to organ brokers," "if you go into a shop you can get killed," "your new parents will beat you," "you will be used as domestic servants," (the last one was asked to friends of ours when they adopted a few years ago by the judge).

We had them speak to Masha (at our home) in D.C. She asked them what they liked to study, what they liked to do. They asked her to tell them about the house?, the neighborhood?, they where surprised by the concept of time zones as it was morning in the US when they called from Ukraine and it was night for us.

Then Max used his secret weapon, William. A young man he assisted in the adoption of to the Krebs Family of NY less than three months ago. William spoke to us for 20 minutes answering hard questions like "Do your parents beat you? Do they love you? Do you have a bicycle? And from the youngest girl (Tanya) is it better here or there?

The evening was indecisive but it had made America "more real" in some ways.

Court.
Monday started with breakfast at the hotel with Maxim and two staff from his Internaut who drove him in. We met up with the other kids at the Courthouse. We waited for the proceding to begin and watched the children interact as four siblings for the first time in several years. This was very amusing, but I just wish it was not such grim surroundings or ominous pretenses.

We filed into the court room, Max at our side as our translator. We went for three hours, with three recesses, and it was summarized by the judge reading a 5-page court finding.

The testimony by the prospective parents was the first hour and fifteen minutes, then the fun:

They Asked Maxim, the eldest, a series of questions. He promptly curled up and could not be made to state his name, let alone if he wanted to go to America (much later he stated "Da!" when asked again). Sasha could not be made to answer either, but Christina was ready with a hearty Nyet!. When asked why, her response was "all her friends are at the Internaut," of course this lead to a vote of one abstain and 3 No's.

The rest of those two hours became a bit of a blur.The judge, male late 40's, sent his two jurors, female, 40's, to poll the kids during a recess. Many sequence of questioning, reasoning and cajoling ensued. At last, the kids were released at a 1 to 3 vote by the kids against leaving the Internut.

Then the last hour of the tribunal. The court reconvened without the three children from the local Internut and asked us to state our position. We simply said that the we loved these children, we understand that for the last 3 years they have lived in two institutions with 24 mothers and no fathers, and we wanted to have them join us to create a family.

At the end of the five-page decree, three hours into the process, he granted us our motion.

So the 10-day appeal period begins, and we prepare to move out with the new family at the conclusion of that time.

Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers.

Yeah!