Fourth Update in Country

We held off on posting this to wait and see if we got good news from the court today and WE DID!! Happy Labor Day! Apparently while Americans are off today the courts here are still open and the Judge accepted our case today! It has been in a court here for a little shy of 2 weeks waiting on a Judge to take it on. He has now up to 10 days to agree to the adoption and sign off on it (this is called Sentencia). Once he signs they receive the name SANJINES and legally become our children. After that we have about a week or so until we can leave the country with them.  This part of our process really does remind us of how we are adopted in Christ and how that process looks. Clearly we have shed some blood, sweat and tears in the process of them becoming ours but NOTHING compared to Christ. Once we are his we receive a new name, a new identity. 

Romans 8:14-19 

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

Just today Jenn spent all of about an hour working with Brandon on writing his name and writing Brandon Sanjines and explaining to him how his name was changing. While he accepts it and seems excited about it he has no idea what that truly means. It means he will be ours forever. We will never leave him, nor abandon him and he will always be called Our Son. 

This past week has been good. We went to the park almost every day. Since Ashlee is here we are taking advantage of the extra help and trying bigger better places and staying out for longer. (which results in a little longer sleeping at night...for all of us)

Jenn took the kids to a place called Divercity last week. We have got to get one of these in the states! Nick got a lot of work done that day at home and the kids learned a lot on our adventure. They basically get to "work" and "play" and earn fake money working at the hospital, firehouse, bank, school, etc and at each station they get to learn for about 20 minutes about that job and practice at it. The Vet even had a real dog for them to listen to his heart. After each job they can then go have "fun" and spend their money. It was a good place to explain that Mami and Papi work for their money to buy things just like they did that day. 

Another day, they got to dress up and play at another place we went to eat. Basically a lot of the restaurants here are kid friendly and have play places for the kids.Over the weekend we went to the Children's Museum with our friends Allyson and Scott and their little girl and that was a fun place too. It is so cool to see the difference in their behavior when we go out places now. We still count on at least a small fit from each of them over not getting ice cream or a toy, but nothing like the thrashing, kicking, screaming for no reason that we were seeing only weeks ago. We are trying to more closely identify when these things happen, are they tired, is it neurological, is it hunger? And once we nail down some triggers we try to avoid them or be prepared for them in the future. We also got to sit down and watch the Tennessee football game online with the kids. They loved cheering for our team and we all dressed in our orange. We taught them the V-O-L-S spell out and they did great. Watching that game was so good for our homesickness. As silly as it sounds it really was nice to feel at home for the night, except we still woke up here in Colombia in the morning. So clearly God still has us here for a little bit longer for a purpose. Our prayer is that we search out that purpose and continue to live for Him while we are here. 

They love to see our family on skype everyday. They also ask about going to the states just about every day, and think that every airplane they see is headed to the states. They have no idea how much LOVE is waiting for them from all of you guys!Thanks for hanging in there with us this week, sorry it took so long to get an update out. Please spend some time along with us PRAISING and PRAYING for these things. 

Prayer Requests:

-Continued bonding for us all as a family
-That they would begin to learn more English so that adapting to the US would be easier on them
-That our case would be signed off on by the judge quickly (Sentencia). Once he signs we have a week or so until we come home!
-That plane tickets would cooperate once we are closer to getting home (we don't want to stay a week longer because of adoption tickets not being available etc)

Praises:

- Michel's TB test/chest x-ray came back NEGATIVE...wahoo! No TB and no meds!
-Ashlee is here visiting us and we're having a great time so far!
-We've made some sweet friendships here and God is continuing to bless us by using them in our time here
-Judge accepted our case and they say the rest is just timing and red tape but its good news that he accepted it 

-The children's defender signed off already (this can often cause delays in the end so its great that it already happened)

Until we are home!