FINAL COURT HEARING

Dear Friends & Family:

We are pleased to inform you that we passed our Final Court Hearing!!! We are officially the new parents for Maya Antonina Guillen..............yeahhhhh............we are soooooooo happy!!!!!

We had such a long day today, but thanks to God everything went great. The court hearing was very intense and emotional (to say the least). There was a moment were things were not going to great, not because of us, but because of something to do with the final report from the social worker..... Ohhh my, they were talking about delaying the court hearing for who knows how long, we were like, ohh my God, nooooo, please. We started praying soo hard, asking God and our angels to please help us out one more time. Thanks to God the issue got resolved and we were able to move on.

Finally we were given a positive conclusion by the Russian court system and the Ministry of Education in which we were found fit to become Maya Antonina's parents. I broke down crying when I heard the final conclusion; I could not hold my tears. Mauri started to cry too.... There were tears of happiness!!!!

Then everybody congratulated us, including the judge, we could see that she was holding her tears too. This has been one of the happiest days of our lives. We can't wait for "Gotcha Day" when we get to pick up Maya from the baby house forever!!!

We now have the 10 day mandatory waiting period until the adoption becomes official. We will pick her up from the baby house on April 3rd. That day she will be exactly 21 months. We can't wait for that day to come......

In the afternoon, we were treated to lunch in order to celebrate our positive conclusion (as they call it) and to meet the head of the Russia Program (who came from the US yesterday) from our agency and the head of the Moscow office. They came down from Moscow for an official visit. We got a chance to talk to the Russia Program Director, and I can proudly say, that on behalf of Mauricio and I and ALL the parents who have adopted during the past year and a half, I had a very long and interesting conversation with him. He was very nice and allowed me to give him an ear full of just not things that we had to go through with the agency and our program coordinators, but I also gave them specific facts of what some of you had to encounter along the way during your adoption process.

We really hope that he will take some of what I told him to heart, not just for us, because we are almost finished with our adoption process, but for ALL the parents who are currently in the process of an adoption with our agency, but especially for those of you who are currently going through a Russian adoption. It will be interesting to see what happens in the future....


After lunch, we were taken for an official visit to the baby house to see our little angel. We went along with the CHI officials who were also scheduled for an official visit to our baby house. We took advantage of our visit, because while they were talking and touring the facilities, we were playing with our little one. Thank God, Maya is doing better from her cold. We could see a difference from when we last saw her on Saturday. We were very relieved that she is doing better. While they were talking business, we took advantage and we requested our translator if we could be granted special permission to observe Maya while she eats tomorrow during our visit, and of course, we were granted permission......A mother has to do what a mother has to do to help her child :o). We know it is going to be to her benefit, because the more we learn about her and she is used to, the more we can help her out during her transition.

We are planning to visit her everyday at the baby house, while we wait the 10 days. We feel it will be extremely beneficial during her transition while she becomes accustomed to us. At the same time, we were advised that just in case anything comes up (God forbid) we will be there to solve any challenges.

Every time, we visit with her, she continues to get used to us. We continue to see that she is very strong willed. As one of my dearest friends told me, "she needs to be that way in order to survive everything they have to go through at the orphanage."

We continue to talk to her in English. We are teaching her to say Mama and Papa. She knows who Papa is, but she is still not sure who Mama is. I guess because other kids at the baby house see all the female workers as Mama's. I will be patient. My turn will come, when I will be her only Mama........

Mauri and I would like to say THANK YOU to all of you for your kind wishes and kind prayers. Please continue to pray for us, since we still have some roads to conquer. We still have to go through some legal hurdles before we leave to Moscow. Once we are in Moscow, we need to go through the US Embassy for her visa, in order to bring her to the US.......Until my next post.....