Phase 4

Please know that your prayers have NOT been in vain. In the 11^th hour, we successfully obtained all of the US government documentation from the high court that was requested from us on April 11, and were able to carry it with confidence (and relief) to court. The teamwork to make this happen in three days, in many cases from people who don’t know us, was nothing short of heroic. This documentation, along with the character references and the presence of family members, greatly increased our credibility in the eyes of the court.

We were blown away by how many people stayed up late or set their alarms to pray for our kids. We felt your prayers in court today—we are not being over-spiritual, we really did. We are so blessed to have family and friends like you, as well as generous, altruistic strangers who care about kids.

Unfortunately, we did not get the thumbs up today. Our ruling is pending, contingent upon prompt receipt of additional documentation and authentication of documents received today.

As of this time, the High Court’s position (in short) is that we still don’t have proof that we have the authorization of the US government to adopt foreign children or formal government acknowledgement of our fitness as parents. Furthermore, that DHS/US-CIS has the right to authorize or reject the assimilation of adopted children when they come to the United States, but not the legal authority to verify that individual citizens have authorization to adopt. We’ll explain more later, hopefully today, so that everyone who is praying for us can be on the same page.

Although we are disappointed, our focus must be to act immediately to address the court’s concerns. Although this is tough to understand from our perspective, we have to respect the right that the court has to ask for any additional documentation, particularly given that there are still concerns about our motives for adoption and fitness as parents.

We need to provide all legal documentation, no matter how technical the detail seems. Hopefully when we finally do so it will make it easier for other American couples who are being blessed with Kenyan children.

Most importantly, today they did NOT take our children away. So, although it seems like disappointing news, we still took our kids back home with us. You can't put a price on that. Although we are a bit biased, we figure that all this must mean God has something really special planned for Sundi and Damon.

More details to follow….we don’t want to hog your time, but if you don’t mind checking in soon to hear how you can pray we would be very grateful.