Soon she will be ours...

Today was a long but happy day for us…Opa, Esther, Hilary and I were off to Butare to meet Violet and Esther’s father to see if we could get her adopted in the sector of her village. There is now a new Minister of Family and Gender and so we decided to go a different route in the adoption to see if it would help our case. The old Minister denied us because she said “this child according to the law of Rwanda is non adoptable”. So we decided to go through the court and actually prove this statement incorrect. So we were off to get the Act of Adoption. Of course dad and I were very skeptical that this was going to actually happen, but were determined to make sure we did not give up on this process and just rolled with the punches. Too many times we have been disappointed and yet we knew that it was something we still had to try. But we went with the attitude that it will not be a disappointment to us if it does not happen and that God will provide for us when the time is right. Of course like all trips to Butare we did a lot f waiting and time ticked slowly as we waited for Hilary to get everything he needed to get this process facilitated. He himself seemed a little unsure if he was going to be able to pull this off but we finally made it to the Executive Secretaries office in the tiny village where Esther was from. We all waited out front while Hilary and a fellow lawyer friend went in to plead our case. Our nerves were all in a bundle and I sat and talked with Esther’s father while we waited. He is a very kind man and wanted to make sure that this was all going to work out. He loves her very much and only wants the best for her. He feels guilty that he is the reason this is not going smoothly and I tried to reassure him that there will be a way and that it will al work out in the end. Time will tell. He told us about the village coming together to build him a house and that it is almost finished except for the roof. He is working hard at a local market to earn the money to finish this house. He also told us that a woman in the village wants to marry him and so he is trying to finish it soon so he can marry her and so he will not spend the remaining time of his life alone. He was worried that he being married would hinder the adoption and I assured him that we are very happy for him and that had nothing to do with it. He was very happy and you could see that his life was finally coming together and getting better. I was so happy for him and cold not be prouder of his work to provide a better life for himself. About 45 minutes from when we got to the office Hilary called me in. When I got to the Executive Secretaries office I could see the Act of Adoption paperwork on his desk and the emotions swept over me. I was doing all I could to not yell out in joy and sat there as he asked me basic questions about myself and my family. My eyes welled up with tears many times in that hour and a lot of things ran through my head. Hilary proudly sat next to me and kept smiling to me out of the corner of his mouth. We both knew without speaking that this was truly a moment that we have all worked so hard for. After our witnesses; Violet and her sister in law, signed the paperwork it was my turn to sign. I took a deep breath and knew that this moment my life was to change. That after all this time Esther was truly going to be our child. We shook hands with the Secretary and walked out of the office. My emotions immediately swept over me and I cried tears of joy behind my glasses. I knew that before it was truly official we needed to get it notarized in the courts, but as far as the sector went she was ours. I did not know what to tell Esther and so I tried to keep quite. Although I am certain that the courts is just a formality of it all I did not want to get her hopes up in case something does not go well. But in my heart I know it will all be fine and this step in the process is over. I am so close to completing what I wanted to when I came. Get her adopted so she is our child and no one can take that away from her. So it was a great day for us, yet we are not completely celebrating until the courts notarize it. We ended the day traveling back to Kigali and Esther and Opa blew up at least 100 balloons throwing them out the window of the van to the kids on the village roads. It was fun to see them laughing together and at one point Opa was lying in the back seat and Esther had her head on his stomach resting. My emotions swept over me again that time and I was very proud to have such a caring father who not only loves me so much but also ALL my children.