Posted from an email sent by Dawn Williams
Hello everyone,
I got a call from Heidi about 3:30 pm our time (Minneapolis). They had just finished giving their children baths and getting them ready for bed. They got all four of them out of their respective orphanages and they are now the Brun family of 6. They do not have to return to the orphanage ever again. They all went to dinner together, had baths and are working at being parents. Heidi said that this afternoon, after they got the 3 little ones, they headed to pick up Max. On the way, Christina was directing who sat where in the car, and Tatiana was being a little poop, while Sasha didn’t feel good. Sounds like a family to me.
Say prayers for all of them as they move as a group in their travels to Kiev and then to America. All of our prayers have been answered.
Dawn (Heidi’s Mom)
Friday, January 30, 2009
Best Day of Their Lives
Posted from an email received from Dawn Williams:
Appeal Status Update
Good Morning everyone.
I just received a call from Heidi. Today was the best day of their lives. They just picked up the court documents for all four children. They met with the prosecutor who is also the best adoption lawyer in town. He called two of his staff and they went to the orphanage with Heidi and Erik and stayed with them until things were finished. There they met with the director's boss and a regional person who kicked butt. The prosecutor squashed the appeal, and after two hours Heidi and Erik were granted final permission to remove the children today. This was after the children were asked once again if they wanted to be adopted and go to America. The two girls said Sasha will speak for them. He said "YES." The children are being prepared at this minute to walk out of the orphanage and move to the suite in the hotel with Heidi and Erik. They are also going to pick up Max this afternoon. So their entire family will be assembled and together for the first time. They discovered that there are already passports in their names, so they truly hope to be out of there and off to Kiev by Tuesday.
Praise God and thank all of you for supporting them during this very difficult process. We have a new family coming home and I have four new grandchildren.
Dawn Williams
Grandmother to Max, Alexander (Sasha), Christina and Tatiana Brun
Appeal Status Update
Good Morning everyone.
I just received a call from Heidi. Today was the best day of their lives. They just picked up the court documents for all four children. They met with the prosecutor who is also the best adoption lawyer in town. He called two of his staff and they went to the orphanage with Heidi and Erik and stayed with them until things were finished. There they met with the director's boss and a regional person who kicked butt. The prosecutor squashed the appeal, and after two hours Heidi and Erik were granted final permission to remove the children today. This was after the children were asked once again if they wanted to be adopted and go to America. The two girls said Sasha will speak for them. He said "YES." The children are being prepared at this minute to walk out of the orphanage and move to the suite in the hotel with Heidi and Erik. They are also going to pick up Max this afternoon. So their entire family will be assembled and together for the first time. They discovered that there are already passports in their names, so they truly hope to be out of there and off to Kiev by Tuesday.
Praise God and thank all of you for supporting them during this very difficult process. We have a new family coming home and I have four new grandchildren.
Dawn Williams
Grandmother to Max, Alexander (Sasha), Christina and Tatiana Brun
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Not Out of the Woods Yet!
In a phone call from Erik...
Erik shared that the Director of the Internaut filed an "intent to appeal" which in effect drags out the legal proceedings by at least another 20 days. And could likely turn into a month or more. Suffice it to say that lawyers have been hired, and the legal games are beginning.
Not About to Quit
From an email by Dawn Williams:
I called Heidi and Erik this morning and had a long visit with them. At that point it was looking promising. They had their work cut out for them getting the changed birth certificates from the town where the children were born and then working to get them all moving towards Kiev. They hoped to be on the road by next Tuesday. But then I got a call from Heidi later this afternoon with another update which they asked me to share with all of you. They are going to be really busy and pushing out all the stops for the next few days.
They were told earlier this afternoon that the director of the orphanage, where the 3 children live, called around town to find an attorney who would write up an appeal to block the adoption proceedings for the 3 children. After being turned down by several attorneys (many of the attorneys in town are aware of the difficulties Heidi and Erik have been faced with and are supporting them in their efforts to adopt). However, she did find one that would draw up the appeal paperwork. As a result, Heidi and Erik are planning some direct strategy for the next few days which could include suing the director. They have several attorneys working with them. They have let out the rumor that they are looking for an apartment to rent or a house to buy. This will give the staff at the orphanage the notion they they are not going away and plan to remain until the children return to America with them. The one good the children have in their favor is that Heidi and Erik are not quitters and are fighting for these children. The director told Heidi that the children should be allowed to remain in Ukraine to live their "mediocre lives."
A good thing that has helped Heidi and Erik during these past few weeks. When they go to visit Maxim he is waiting at the door for them, happy to see them and engaged with them during the whole visit. Then he goes to the door to wave to them as they leave. I am sure that has helped to keep them going.
I will stay in touch with them by phone and will update you all again when I talk to them later this week.
We all need to get our prayer chains going because they truly need them now.
Dawn Williams
Heidi's mother in Minnesota
dawnbrody@yahoo.com
They were told earlier this afternoon that the director of the orphanage, where the 3 children live, called around town to find an attorney who would write up an appeal to block the adoption proceedings for the 3 children. After being turned down by several attorneys (many of the attorneys in town are aware of the difficulties Heidi and Erik have been faced with and are supporting them in their efforts to adopt). However, she did find one that would draw up the appeal paperwork. As a result, Heidi and Erik are planning some direct strategy for the next few days which could include suing the director. They have several attorneys working with them. They have let out the rumor that they are looking for an apartment to rent or a house to buy. This will give the staff at the orphanage the notion they they are not going away and plan to remain until the children return to America with them. The one good the children have in their favor is that Heidi and Erik are not quitters and are fighting for these children. The director told Heidi that the children should be allowed to remain in Ukraine to live their "mediocre lives."
A good thing that has helped Heidi and Erik during these past few weeks. When they go to visit Maxim he is waiting at the door for them, happy to see them and engaged with them during the whole visit. Then he goes to the door to wave to them as they leave. I am sure that has helped to keep them going.
I will stay in touch with them by phone and will update you all again when I talk to them later this week.
We all need to get our prayer chains going because they truly need them now.
Dawn Williams
Heidi's mother in Minnesota
Monday, January 26, 2009
Photos 1-26-09, part 4
Maxim and his teacher, she is the most caring and thought-full teacher I have ever met. I never would have graduated elementary school if I had her as an instructor! ( I would have deliberately failed the tests)
Photos 1-26-09, part 3
Welcome sign for Severdonetz
Heidi rings the monastery bell with a wish
Sleigh bells - Ruslan took us for a ride
Photos 1-26-09, part 2
Svendlana, our librarian protector. She taught Russian for 40 years and now developed the library. She has been very kind to us, at risk of her own job here.
Ruslan
Vova with helmet we found laying around, (he needed it this week)
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!
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!
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