Moving Forward

So we have decided that k is to be ours.  We feel strongly that the date we received the referral was God's way of reassuring us of that.
So we have finalized the paperwork on our end and sent it off with the remainder of the agency fees.  The paperwork has reached Uganda and the attorneys have submitted the paperwork to court. We are officially waiting for a court date now!
We should expect to hear nothing for the next 1-2 months. When we get the call for our court date, we expect to travel within 4-5 weeks and be there for 7-10 days. We will be taking Gabe with us and leaving the little lady behind. This will be a life changing experience for all of us!
We will get to meet k and spend some time with him. As of right now, we do not know if he will be left alone with us or if it will be supervised because we won't go to court until the end of that week.... We will have to appear before the judge and ask permission to adopt k.  I am told that the decision most likely will not even be made while we are in country. We will have to return home, leaving our son behind.  I just can't even fathom what that will be like! .....I think that it will seem less painful each time I have to say it, but it still has the same sting!
Another little surprise ...... Because K's village borders the Congo, it is of course extremely dangerous there, which means that we will not be allowed to go visit his village.... Never to see where our son comes from, so that as he gets older we could help fill in some of the gaps in his life.
I'd like to think that we will be all he needs, but still shutter to think there may be an emptiness in his heart for a home that he won't remember and for his native tongue that he will eventually lose. As much as we can give him, that will forever be a piece of himself that will be gone.

So, once we leave Uganda after the first trip, we will wait for the judge to make a ruling. When the judge rules, our attorney will be there to relay the news back to us. At this point we will be granted guardianship.  .....Well, we hope!Then we will have to wait another 4-6ish weeks before we can travel back to bring our boy home. We will have to be there 2-3 weeks for the 2nd trip. This is where a lot of the expense comes in since we have paid all of our agency fees.
I hope I will have K with me while I am there, but do not yet know how that will work. Because Mike's job is not quite as flexible, I will have to go this trip alone.  My mom has volunteered to join me.  I'm sure this journey together will be one that will be etched, in detail, in our minds and hearts together!
The purpose of this visit is to get visa and immigration paperwork handled and then we will be bringing K home to the 2nd part of his life!
I think that this is how we will have to look at it...... there will be 2 distinct parts to his life...... one part that belongs to his biological parents and one part that belongs to us.
We will never know holding him in our arms as a baby and have the stories of his first word or first steps, but I'm ok with that because those will forever belong to the beautiful human beings who created him and loved him all those years before we were there. I am sad that there had to be such a loss to create the new love and life that we will have together. We will forever be thankful for it as well. It is such a beautiful bitter sweet journey.