Today, April 8, 2013, is, we hope, the day we finally get Hannah’s adoption approved. We have been here before, to this court in Jinja, Uganda, but the wheels for this sort of thing, especially in Africa, can grind slow.
Today, Hannah has on her best dress and, with us – and her siblings and our lawyer and our social worker — all standing in front of a judge for what we hope is the final approval.
Hannah, who had been one of too many Ugandan orphans, has been with us 45 months now, making our days brighter, filling out our family, teaching us things we otherwise wouldn’t know without her. We could no longer imagine life without Hannah.
After our court appearance we will visit the orphanage that Hannah came from, which is some 90 minutes from our house, but isn’t more than a few minutes from the court. The orphanage still has great symbolic meaning.
And this is the orphanage that has been on Liz’s mind in recent weeks. She has solicited her friends (not to mention Jon and Hannah for some allowance donations) and our neighbours and her school and anyone else who will listen to her, all to raise what is now over 200,000 shillings (that’s about $80 Cdn).
Today we give that donation, along with donated clothes, plus rice, flour and sugar from the grocer, plus notebooks, keychains and jewelry that Liz and her friends have made with their own imaginations and hands.
For today’s court appearance, congratulations, to us …. we hope.
But even if this inevitable formality is delayed again, today is still a worthwhile day. And for that, Liz, congratulations to you.
During the midst of Liz’s recent campaign, a Ugandan working for one of our neighbours asked – ‘Where does that little girl get that from?’ She obviously doesn’t know My Bride so well.
https://thomasfroese.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/20090808-spec-hannah.pdf