Introducing...

Asen James Jakubauskas!!

Our court date was today and our adoption has been granted! So what comes next? We wait some more. :-) The adoption decree will be signed by the judge in seven days (February 29). Then our facilitator will pick up the decree and take it to get the new birth certificate issued. That will take a week as well (March 1). At that point Elena will take both documents to be translated and make arrangements for our pick up trip. We should be able to travel to pick him up sometime after March 15, providing that there are no more delays. But honestly, after all of the delays we have experienced another delay at this stage would not surprise me at all. But just knowing he will be home before his 5th birthday is so exciting!

Curious about his name? We chose to keep his Bulgarian given name (Asen) to give him a connection to his birth country and his life before he became a part of our family. The staff at the orphanage is very fond of our little guy and they call him Sennie (Take the "A" off of Asen and add a long "e") and also Asencho (Asen plus "cho" like the beginning of "chosen"). Asencho is a diminutive form of his given name, sort of like when we call our Eve "Evie". Our family usually calls him Sennie when we talk about him, but we also call him Asen and A.J. His middle name is from James 1:27 - "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."

Join us in praising God for this blessing!

We also ask that you join us in praying that we will have no more delays and Asen will be home as soon as possible.

If you are able, you can still donate toward our travel expenses and enter to win some amazing prizes at Forty to Forever.