It's Official!

We did it - we passed court!!! Nathan Mohammed Brogdon, you are officially ours!

We only have a few minutes to post this so I'll do a more thorough job later, but for now just know that court was a little nerve-wracking. We had the "hard" judge who they call Texas because she has huge blonde hair. Everyone here is very stern looking...don't smile very often in pictures or formal situations so that's rough too. Clint gave the main speech with all the details (very patriarchal society) and I gave a short emotional one. 

They asked a bunch of questions and one of the main issues was Clint's job (thought we might be adopting in order to grow our church). They also had some misconceptions about "baptist" because here it has a totally different connotation. They questioned me about whether we were allowed to seek medical care and random things like that. Another major problem for the prosecutor was that not many people had been shown N-M. She wanted to have more people look at him before they selected a family. Everyone else there told her that the reason more people haven't seen him is because nobody wants him since he is so "old". Sad but true in the adoption world. Anyway, we were in great hands with our team here (and of course the Big Guy's hands as well!) and they finally made their decision -- we couldn't be happier! 

Ministry of Education lady, baby house doctor, Olga (coordinator here)

We are also excited because at 3pm today we get to take little N-M out of 'jail' to go get his passport photo taken. This will be our first time out and we think we'll go get some ice cream too. 

Yesterday as we were bringing Nathan back inside he said America and looked really sad. As we headed to his room he started crying pretty hard and wouldn't let go of me. Clint ran outside to get Igor so we could ask his caregivers what was wrong and it turns out he knows we're leaving soon and he wants to go back to America with us now. It was really heartbreaking and now we're dreading our visit tomorrow (last one before we leave) even more. It looks like we'll fly to Almaty on Saturday and then leave for the states on Sunday at 4am. Should be in DC later on Sunday and then back to GA on Wednesday. So glad to be heading home but we'll miss our little guy terribly.