Will the Judge say "Yes"?

                                                 

                                                                "Mama do I belong?"

The date was October 27, 2011.  My husband and I woke up early.  We always begin our day with prayer together.  But this morning we had a much longer and intense time of prayer.  For this was the day.  The day a Judge would decide if he agreed that Z belonged in our family.  
We were so nervous.  We kept praying and reading promises from our Father to us.  Promises like:  "and  I will be with you even until the end of the world."  Or, "I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me."  "Do not be afraid nor dismayed for the battle is not yours but God's."  We also sang praises to God.  
Finally the time came to stand before the Judge.  We had spent months supplying document after document to satisfy the requirements of the Russian government.  In fact, we ended up with a stack almost 4 inches thick of documents.  Would it be enough we wondered?
The Judge began to question Trent.  And in fact questioned him at length.  The Attorney representing the interests of the child, also began to question Trent. They seemed the most disturbed about the fact that we homeschooled our older 2 children.  What could be the motive to do such a thing.  They felt there had to be some deviant or sinsiter motive.  Finally, they began to question me.  Then they started questioning Trent again.
After close to 2 hours they let the orphanage director state her opinion on the matter, the Ministry of Education represenative and the cities social worker.  The first two gave affirmation to our petition to adopt.  But the social worker did not.  We were told that it is the official position of the city to be against foreign adoption of their children.
The Judge again began to question us.  This time about the three objections that the social worker had raised.  Also I saw him reach for his calendar.  I had been praying the whole time that my husband was being questioned.  And I redoubled my prayers when I saw him reach for his calendar.
For whatever reason, God allowed the Judge to require us to come back to court a second time.
Wow, were we ever stressed at this point.  Russia isn't exactly a hop and a skip from where we live!  Not to mention we already were being required to complete the adoption in 4 trips.  Now we had to add a fifth.
The picture above is actually after court.  We tried to stay cheerful for Z's sake.  She didn't understand what it all meant.  
We told her we would be back and try again.