Albania Days 29 & 30

Day 29:

We finally have a court date!  BUT it is not the quick news we had been hoping for. For some reason our judge has decided his schedule is quite busy running up to the August holiday month so he has chosen to schedule us for mid July...more than three weeks from now.  Sigh. He has also requested some unprecedented details regarding how my girl became available for adoption, which has left me scrambling to pray for my girly's precious heart in a way that I had not done before. Our adoption agency is scratching their heads, the Sisters are equally frustrated and I have had a gamete of emotions today. Six more weeks in country, how are we going to do this?!
In the midst of so many things that I do not understand or control I am brought back to: What DO I know?  I know this:

• My girl is a worthy, valued, loved and precious child of God. She is worthy of ALL that I can give to the Lord on her behalf. 
• God clearly ordained this adoption and promised to move mountains & split seas if I obey.
• My emotions & circumstances do not dictate decision making. That is the Holy Spirit's job. 
• We have prayed for the Lord to be glorified through this entire process and whether we walk the Red Sea Road on dry ground or climb the highest peak by God's grace, the Lord can and will be glorified through it all. 

Our agency has asked us to consider some hard decisions about our time here over the next three weeks while we wait for the court date. We are praying now and ask you to do the same even as I don't reveal all the details. We knew this journey would not be rainbows and unicorns, but GOD IS GOOD ALL THE TIME. Please join us in declaring this as we graciously walk through this adoption process.

In other news, Sweet Girl came with us to get gelato today. This is her response to anything she approves of...goof ball!

Day 30:

Giving my girl my phone to play with seems to be the highlight of many of her days. She often just roams the hallways of the orphanage taking photos and video of seemingly random things, leaving me 150-200 photos to delete. But I also enjoy seeing life from her perspective--the Sisters, workers and kids in her life. Pockets of the orphanage that often aren't on display. She delights in showing me her work, describing each person and detail. I can't show many of these photos as they include faces of children in State care, but I do treasure them...and the girl taking them. Perhaps photography is in her future?

This afternoon we met up with our local friends and a new missionary friend from England. It was relaxing to chat and walk through the city that they call home. We shared a list of things that we have already seen in Elbasan. The one thing we were missing was the Ethnographic Museum reviewing the important commercial center that Elbasan was in the 17th century, exporting it's leather, fabrics and silverwork through the Ottoman Empire. 

Relics of Ottoman and Roman empire are not uncommon about town (Rumor is an old Roman road in just outside of town that historians are nearly certain Apostle Paul took on his treks from Greece through Macedonia to Rome. We made our local friends promise to take us there!):

Annie modeled some of the textiles made in Elbasan:

Intricately carved wooden ceiling and brazier in the middle of the floor:

Isaac was particularly proud of the Roman frescoes:

(This boy...I tell ya')