Out of Family Court!

Hi All - this is Jimmy...

Well our adoption agency director just called me to tell me we are officially out of Family Court! Our lawyer was at Family Court today to get the file released - and the social worker had some last minute requests for pictures that we were able to dig up and email to our attorney...but around the end of the day they released our file.

This is a big step to complete and we are very excited to finally have some progress!

The next step is PGN - which is basically the Guatemalan Attorney General's office. PGN approval is the last big step in the Guatemalan adoption process and typically is one of the longest steps in the process. As many of you have probably heard in the news, recently the Guatemalan government has been requiring an additional birth mother interview...which has caused quite a bit of concern and controversy. Well that additional interview occurs at PGN. A month+ ago this was a big deal - but a lot of the problems seem to have died down - so we are very hopeful.

In case you are interested in what happens next, my understanding is (1) Our lawyer has to get some additional documentation and do some more preparation of our case - then they submit it to PGN (2) Our case has to pass the 1st PGN reviewer. At any point a reviewer can find a problem, which our attorney will have to correct and then resubmit our case (3) Once the 1st reviewer approves - the birth mother interview is scheduled and occurs at PGN (4) Once that goes well we have to be approved by the 2nd reviewer (5) Then the PGN director signs off and the case is released.

So please be praying for
(1) That our attorney is meticulous in preparing our case for PGN (PGN is known to be very picky - sometimes giving "previos" - kicking the case out for correction - on cases for missing page numbers for example)
(2) That our case will have a speedy entry into PGN
(3) That our case will be quickly approved by PGN
(4) That our Birth Mother interview at PGN will go smoothly. That she is prepped well in advance and that she says she still wants to give Samuel up for adoption.

Thanks for all of your support!!