Like Courtroom Dramas?

We'll spoil the ending right away. We passed court this afternoon and the 15 day appeal period begins.

Now for the drama. We arrived early, about ten minutes past twelve for our 12:30 court appointment. We were the first to arrive, followed shortly by Dr. Agim (from Bethany), then by the Sisters from Reni's orphanage, and finally at 12:30 by our attorney Altin (he was held up because of an accident on the road from Tirana to Elbasan).

To the shock of all six of us, the judge told us we were all late as the court case was supposed to start at noon. I don't think nuns are allowed to lie and they claimed their summons (back at the orphanage) stated the proceedings were to begin at 12:30. Our hearts sank as we knew this could be grounds for postponement if our judge so wanted. She had another case scheduled to begin at 12:30 and this one included a man in handcuffs.

Another issue was that the representative from the Adoption Committee had a car break down, delaying him indefinitely. His presence was required to complete the case today. And again, the judge would have been within her rights to postpone our case to another day if she didn't want to wait for his arrival.

Instead, she decided to start with who was there (delaying the next case) and hope that the others would arrive before we finished. After giving a brief testimony as to why we wanted to adopt Reni, we were ushed back into the hallway to await the arrival of the committee rep. Since no one had his direct line, we didn't really know when he was expected to arrive.

We passed the next hour or more in the hallway making small talk with the two Sisters. We also were debating Reni's adoptive name. Middle names are not common in Albania, and our request to name him "David Reni Waggoner" really threw confusion into the mix. After some discussion the judge agreed to allow us to give him a middle name but there was concern that it could delay production of his passport at the central office. In the end, we decided to adopt him as "Reni Waggoner" and embark on a name change back in the States when the time comes.

In the mean time, the judge left, but returned after the the representative from the adoption committee eventually arrived. Everyone (but us) was ushered back into the office, the rep was asked if his opinion had changed since last week. He said, "no," and the case was complete in less than a minute! The poor guy walked out of the courthouse and was on his way back to Tirana before his car could even cool down!

Thank you for your prayers today! I hope you share our joy in reaching this point in the process. It's official! He's Reni Waggoner!