Our court date

June 11, 2004

Court is over. They approved the “contract of adoption” which means
they said yes. It has been hard, but it’s also been
great. We have had so many people praying for us and especially for
the children, many of whom don’t even know us. It renews my faith
that there are people out there who actually care about the kids,
really and truly. We have had all kinds of people helping us for
absolutely zero compensation. One is the woman we met first at the
court who thought the US Embassy was the problem. We met her again

at KM and she told us that she recognized Ashenafe and that she had
helped with their adoption 2 years ago. We saw her in court again
today and she said she had been praying all week and that she felt
inspired to go see one of her best friends – who happens to work at
MOLSA. She found out yesterday that our letter from them would be a
positive one this time. She said she told them that even with
18 children, they needed to look at income and size of the home (it’s 8400 square feet!) and that was sufficient. Besides that, she said, a
family with a Mom and a Dad, even with 18 children, is better than
living here in an orphanage with no prospects for the future. She
also said she would keep praying for us! She told us about someone
she knows that doesn’t know anything else about us except that we
were denied because of family size and SHE has been praying for us
too. I know that word has spread and we have many,many friends and
family who have kept us all in their prayers.

The first time we saw the judge this morning, he said that Ethiopian law required any
children over age 10 to appear in court to give their consent. I
would hope that the law is applied in every case, but I wonder, as
we didn’t know anything about it and everyone seemed to be surprised
by it. But, Zelalem (our driver this week), ran back to the
orphanage and got Buzaneh. He was about scared spitless, but it was
pretty smooth. The judge asked him if he understood the contract
the orphanage had made in his behalf, and asked if it was OK with
him that we became his parents. The Amharic word for yes is “ow”
and he barely whispered it. It sounded more like he was just
sucking in his breath. But, with that, the judge approved the
adoption of all 4 children. The Richardson family has officially
grown. Both letters (from us and Sister Lutgarda) made a difference
in changing MOLSA’s mind. And, as sad as we were to be turned down last week, we were blessed by being turned down, as were are able to take a baby home. I don’t think we would have been able to re-do the entire process after Tereza died. As it was, we were able to file paperwork with Salome’s name and it all ended up working out.

We were “supposed” to be getting a bunch of
paperwork done today, but the court won’t do them until Monday. I
was afraid that might happen, but oh well. Henock is not here and
we don’t know how to “argue” our case to convince them to do it
quicker. That does mean we can’t take the kids until Monday
though. We still played with them and we did learn something
interesting. Over here the last names are actually the father’s
first name, so Ashenafe Taheme (Ashenafe’s “official” name) simply
tells us that his father was Taheme.
Thank you again for your love and support!

Holly, Greg, Buzaneh, Bethlehem, Thomas and Tereza (plus all the
others!)

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