Day 5- GOTCHA DAY!!!

today, september 30 will always be celebrated in our home as Gotcha Day! the day that raymond officially became our son!! we are now parents of two incredible boys. wow, how fun life is going to be!!! this trip so far has been so amazing, exciting, really hard, painful, actually if you think of an emotion i have probably felt it in the 5 days that i have been here. i am totally exhausted and miss my family so much.

we were suppose to hear our ruling at 2:00pm today, but the judge was a little behind so we didn't hear it till just after 3:00pm. my wonderful friend (who is here with her husband to bring home their son) came along with me for moral support. it was so great to have her there with me. thank you so much kathryn, you guys have been a HUGE blessing to me! we were in the judges chambers for about 20 minutes and it was over, andy and i are his parents.

so now onto the paperwork to get us home. we have to wait for the official court papers to have raymond released to us. they have a court reporter in the room who is hand writing everything that the judge says, she has to later type up the court documents then give us a copy so we can have raymond released to us and a copy goes to the judge to be signed. the signed copy will be used to get raymond's visa. so tonight i had to put raymond to bed again in the children's building. it was hard, i just want to bring him back to the guesthouse. please pray that we get the court documents tomorrow.

so from here we still have lots to do. we do not have a birth certificate for raymond, hopefully by the end of the week. we need to get his passport which i hope is being applied for tomorrow. we have to take him to a doctor to have visa paperwork filled out. we have to apply for his visa after we have all the previous things done. i hope that our worst case scenario is 2 more weeks, but pray that it goes quicker! god has been so faithful so far, so i know everything will happen in perfect timing for his reasons. thanks everyone for the kind words, your support has been awesome, i can feel the love from here.

oh, and today i saw a cow standing at the gas pump at a gas station. just a random black cow. cars just drove around it like it was normal!