Court Continues...

When the Parkisons were at the orphanage on October 1st, the director kept trying to tell them something about the court cases. He was trying to communicate something to the affect that a new judge was going to replace Judge Parmar this week (or next week?) and that he hoped there would not be problems, but he would go speak to the judge. I was confused as to why he would be concerned because my third (and presumed final) hearing was that same day. Anyway, sure enough, when the court website updated two days later (slight delay due to Ghandi's birthday), we were disappointed to see that our third hearing was not our final hearing and that a new judge had indeed taken over our court case. A 4th hearing is now on the books for October 15th. The Irish families will have their 3rd hearing two days after that with the new judge as well. It is not clear why we are having extra hearings... It is possible that one or two of the hearings were "rained out," either figuratively or literally (it is monsoon season) and the judge was unable to make it to court. I'm not sure if we'll ever know. However, looking in the court archives from 2011-2012, there have been other families from Austria and U.S. who have had from 6-8 hearings. That's a bit unsettling to see. Our agent said that there is always concern when a new judge takes over because no one knows if they are adoption supportive yet. At least we have another hearing scheduled relatively soon. Praying fervently over here!

We received that disappointing news on the way to the airport to pick up S.Parkison on his return trip from India. We appreciated that timing because he boosted our moods again. We loved hearing about his adventures in India and stories of his new precious daughter. We hung on every word as he talked about meeting our two children again. When we were talking about the FaceTiming session he asked if I had a missed call on the Ipad. I said no, but grabbed it to check and see. And YES, there WAS a missed call from a very long number. It turns out, it was the Face Time number of our orphanage director! Haha! When they tried to FaceTime with me, they first tried from the IPhone of the director! So now I have his number, and somewhere in his phone, I'm sure that he has mine. That may come in handy! Haha!

We got S settled in at my parents' house to recover from traveling before he was to reunite with his other children the following morning. I got this picture of the guys. I'm so glad that Jeff has found a new friend in S!