Finally...Posting from Home!!

We made it!! We're home! And how nice to be here. We arrived at our house on Saturday, September 4th, at about 8:45 p.m. After being awake for nearly 36 hours with only dozing on the planes and a 3-hour nap during our layover, we were so happy to get home to our nice, comfy beds. The bumpy landing in LA, combined with being very tired, challenged our tummies to maintain!! It's nice to be back on the ground.

We've been home for about a week now, and I think we are starting to get ourselves figured out a little bit. Geof is working part days so he can be home more. He will ease back into full-time soon. It's so nice to have him around while we are trying to get used to a new normal. Our new normal includes using google translate to communicate important ideas and instructions. But when Geof is around he's our translator! Our goal right now is to help Yamile learn English, and we accomplish that in many different ways. We say as much as we can in both English and Spanish. She watches a show that teaches language, and we read bilingual books to her. Of course, total immersion helps! And there are lots of little girls that want to come over and play with her, so we are trying to include playdates as often as we can. Yesterday, Emma came over for a rousing game of Uno, and today Kate is here for some of the same.

Considering all the huge, life-altering changes Yamile has just been through, and is still going through, she has been a real trooper. It's not easy to change ALL that is familiar to you and still have a huge smile on your face, but somehow she is managing to do that most of the time. She is an amazing girl, and we love her!!

Thank you so much to all of you who have read our blog and cared about our story. Your prayers, posts, and encouragements have been a huge blessing. We look forward with eagerness to this new chapter in our lives. Our love to you all....Geof, Lenna, Annalisa, Rebecca, and Yamile!

Update on French Family

I wanted to update everyone about the French family's baby which I told you about earlier. The baby is still in the hospital and there is a chance he will lose both his feet and parts of his fingers. He had something that I think is called "purpurea" which interfered with the blood supply to his feet and hands. At first they expected him to lose his hands entirely, but they have managed to save them all the way down to most of the fingers. They are hoping to save his feet as well, but right now it doesn't look all that promising. He is out of a coma now (I believe they induced the coma), but he is still on a respirator.

It looks like the French embassy is working with the family to bring a French doctor here to Bogota. The hope is that they can stabilize the baby well enough to get him home to France. I think the doctor will travel with him. If they can, they will travel in about a week. Again, thank you for your prayers for this family.

Last Blog from Colombia

Well folks, all our bags are packed and we're ready to go. Amazingly, we won't need any additional suitcases for the trip home - 6 suitcases and 6 carry-ons is enough, I think!

Today we went to lunch with Martha and helped her out by donating a scanner/printer so she can more effectively continue to help adoptive families. We also needed to pick up Yamile's passport with her visa at the U.S. Embassy. We were told to be there at 3:30. We ended up getting there at about 3:40 and the place looked kind of deserted. We came to the main entrance and had to knock on the window to get someone's attention. They let us in and then we went to the window where we'd applied for the visa yesterday. There was no one at any of the windows and we had to keep banging on the bullet-proof glass to get someone's attention. The man who assisted us already had all of Yamile's information ready. He handed it over to us and we were done in about 5 minutes. What a relief! We were starting to sweat it out a bit, thinking we'd arrived too late.

We leave the hotel at 10 PM tonight (8 PM Pacific Time) so we can be at the airport three hours before our flight. This should allow time in case there are any unforeseen delays at the airport (and, with Bogota's traffic, you never know how much time you'll need to get there). We board the plane for our 7-hour voyage at 1:35 AM and we'll be at LAX at 6:30 AM Pacific Time. We look forward to seeing Gus and Melissa Pidal and their boys during our lengthy layover in L.A.

See y'all soon!

Go Zags

I forgot to post something from last Sunday (August 29th) that I didn't want to forget, especially for Mike, Jill, and other interested parties. When we went to the soccer game and were waiting for tickets, I saw someone walking toward the stadium with a red Gonzaga sweatshirt! Judging solely by this guy's outward appearance, my guess is that he had no clue what (or who) Gonzaga was. I thought immediately of the Zag fans back home. Go Zags!

We're Coming Home

Today's whirlwind just kept on going after we arrived back at the hotel. I interrupted my lunch to call our U.S. travel agent and see if we could rearrange our travel plans to return on September 4th or 5th. He emailed me back soon after and said that, because we were adopting, we could change our flight plans on Avianca (the Colombian airline flying from Bogota to LAX) with no fee for the change. To do it, however, we had to go to an Avianca office here in Bogota.

We called Martha and she directed us to an Avianca office located in the mall that is a 10-minute walk from our hotel. Martha offered to serve as a translator over the phone if we needed her help. We walked into the Avianca office and almost immediately it was our turn at the window. I feel sorry for the poor gal who helped us because my Spanish sounds like a three-year old trying to talk - tenses are wrong; nouns, adjectives, and verbs are all used incorrectly; vocabulary is limited. Fortunately, she understood what I was trying to get across - we wanted to leave on September 4th rather than September 9th.

Unfortunately, we ran into a sticky problem - Avianca had seats to offer us, but our flight from LAX to Reno did not (that flight was on Alaska Airlines, not Avianca). To top it off, they could only make the change with no fee if the new flight had seats available that were the same "class" as ours, and they only had three seats in the same class (we needed five). While the agent spent a lot of time on the phone, we were trying to plan how we would do this. Maybe three of us could go on the 4th with the other two following on the 5th. Maybe we'd have to stay until the 9th. Maybe we'd just fly to LA and try to figure out how to get home from there. We didn't much like any of the alternatves.

After a long while, the agent said they found a flight from LAX to Reno that had seats for us in the same class. It would mean a 12-hour layover in LAX, but they could make the change for us. Alaska Airlines would charge us for the change, but it was still much less than five more nights in Bogota. The agent made the arrangements for us and we will be on our way home on the 4th, arriving in Reno at 7:15 PM.

As to what happened to allow the five of us to change our Avianca flights (even though there were only three available seats in the same class) I do not know. But I think that the long phone call by the agent may have had something to do with it. I didn't get her name, but I am so thankful for her patience and her help in dealing with us. Once again, the Lord has blessed us and we are praising Him.

Tonight I told Yamile we were traveling at 1:30 AM on the 4th (meaning we're leaving the hotel at 10 PM tomorrow night). She was very excited to hear the news, flashed her heart-warming smile, and gave me a big hug. Even twelve hours in LAX did not dim her spirits. We're coming home.

God is Amazing and Awesome!

God is definitely amazing, awesome, and sovereign. Thanks to God's sovereign hand (and the prayers of the saints), he used our adoption coordinator (Martha) to get everything completed today and we're working on coming home this weekend.

Today we embarked on a task that seemed virtually impossible - obtaining all the paperwork we needed and arriving at the US Embassy by 11:30 AM, in time to apply for a visa. We were supposed to receive (via courier service) new birth certificates for Yamile yesterday and begin the final paperwork process so we could apply for the visa today. It turns out that there was an error in the mailing address so the papers were not delivered like they should have been. This left us distraught, because if we didn't apply for the visa today, we would not be able to travel until next Tuesday evening at the earliest. At this point, however, Martha began working the phones and doing all she could to help us.

Last night she sent a driver across Bogota (think of sending a driver across Los Angeles or New York City) to pick up the birth certificates at the courier's office. She also spent much of the day yesterday making phone calls to set up arrangements for today.

The first item on our agenda was to obtain a new Colombian identification card for Yamile. We needed that to be able to get a new passport for her. The ID card office opened at 8 AM, but Martha arranged for someone to stand in line on our behalf. Martha and our driver for the day (Miguel) arrived at the hotel at 7:25 and we were off to the ID card office. (Martha also arranged for the driver to wait for us throughout the day, so we would not have to flag down a taxi every time we completed a task.) At the ID card office, our "place holder" was third in line. The office opened at 8 AM at the public servant arrived at his station at about 8:10 or so. Like I said, we were third in line, but Martha knew that every minute would count. She quietly spoke to the two mothers in front of us and they allowed us to move ahead of them in line. What a blessing to start the day. We were done by 8:20 and on our way to our next stop.

Miguel took us to the passport office next (or at least took us close - we had to jump out of the cab, run across the street between the cars in rush-hour traffic, and run into the office). Martha led us quickly into a store where Yamile's passport photo could be taken. After the snapshot, Lenna waited in the store while Martha took me and Yamile into the actual passport office, giving Lenna instructions to come in as soon as she had the photos and tell the guards she was there for adoption and they would let her in. Martha wisked Yamile and me around the passport office from one station to the next, taking care of everything. She briefly stopped a woman and spoke with her. It turns out this woman was the director of the office and Martha explained the situation. Martha told me that as soon as we paid the passport fee, we would be expedited to the front of the line. At this time, Lenna arrived with the photos, after being asked something by the guard on the way in. I don't know if she knows what she was asked, but somehow she was able to enter. Martha paid the fee, Yamile and Lenna accompanied her to the window and, not long after, we had Yamile's new Colombian passport (with her new name!).

The next step in the process was for Yamile to be seen by a physician to make sure she was healthy enough to enter the U.S. Of course, this meant driving to some other area of the city. This doctor usually will not see children in the morning for these physicals after 9 AM. Martha had called previously and spoken with the doctor and he said he would see Yamile as long as she arrived by 9:30. At precisely 9:28 we showed up at the receptionist desk in the doctor's office! (Can you imagine the fix we would have been in if we hadn't had someone standing in line for us, if the two women had not let us go first, if Martha had not expedited the passport procedure? We would have been unable to proceed any further and our day would be done.) The doctor reviewed the vaccination and medical records and we chatted with him a bit (all the time knowing that the clock was ticking on us). After a brief examination and conversation with Yamile, he had some more items to let us know. Finally, he approved everything and we were out of his office by 10 AM.

Now, we had to get to the ICBF office to pick up more paperwork. Every time we got back in the car, Martha immediately began collecting and organizing all the documents we would need for our next stop. (And I am so glad for Lenna's organizational skills that made sure we had every document we needed! She has kept everything so well organized and complete from the beginning, and it has been a tremendous blessing throughout the one-year adoption process.) At ICBF, Martha led us into one office, where she talked to some people and got the paperwork she needed. Once we were done there, we had to run (and I literally mean "run") to another office in the same building. This office did not appear to be heavily staffed and Martha began asking for the paperwork we needed. Martha actually looked around the office a bit and found the paperwork she was looking for. We were introduced to several people who had helped Yamile at ICBF and it appeared they wanted to chat with us and Martha for a bit. Martha politely let them know of our predicament and we charged out the door on the way to our next venue.

The next destination was the U.S. Embassy to apply for the visa for Yamile to travel to the U.S. as our adopted daughter. Normally, you must be at the Embassy by 11 AM in order to put in your visa request. Martha called them yesterday and explained the situation to them. She was told that we could have until 11:30. We arrived at 11:05 and went past the long lines of Colombian citizens seeking visas right to the front. We were let in right away and submitted the paperwork. From this point forward, it was just a waiting game. While waiting, we encountered two other KidSave families. One family was adopting a 16-year old boy. The other family was adopting 16- and 17-year old sisters. It was neat to hear a bit of their stories and see the excitement on the faces. Finally, at about 1 PM, we were called to the window, answered a few quick questions, and were told that everything was approved. We get to pick up the visa tomorrow (September 3rd) at 3:30 - which means we get to come home ASAP.

The morning was a whirlwind, and Martha mentioned how stressed she felt throughout the morning. The driver commented (joked?) that he had a sore neck because of the stress from driving us from location to location in the maze of Bogota's streets and traffic.

What seemed impossible to us yesterday was completed in an amazing fashion today. And none of it would have happened without God sovereignly causing everything to fall into place. We praise Him for His great work (Martha was joining us in admiring what God was doing). We know that God could have chosen to cause us to wait, and we would have had to be patient with God's plan and His timing, but we are rejoicing that He is allowing us to return home now. Thank you again for your prayers, and we look forward to being home in Fallon again soon.

Mas fotografias

Okay, folks are asking for more pictures, so we'll post some for you. The first three are when we were still in Neiva. The photo of Yamile, Rebecca and Geof was taken right after we had our integracion meeting. We went out for a special dinner and everybody got to order some special Colombian fruit drinks. The last photo was taken in one of our rooms at Hotel Paris, where we are right now.

Waiting...............

Tall man Geof trying not to crack his head on the doorway of the bathroom!!

So here we sit waiting for paperwork to arrive by courier so we can go somewhere to fill out more forms. We were told our papers should be here between 10 and 11 am. Well it's now 11:45 and our representative just called to tell us that she is also waiting for the papers to arrive. They should have been here by now so someone is apparently trying to track them to see where they are. The Lord knows where they are and what His plan for us is, so we have taken our request to Him and we are trusting Him to work it all out exactly the way He means for it to happen.

There is another family here from France who is adopting twin boys who are about one year old. One of the twins ended up in the hospital in critical condition a couple of weeks ago. It appears he had some kind of allergic reaction to something and nearly died. He has had a cardiac arrest, a diabetic reaction, nearly lost his fingers to a strange sort of infection, and is currently on life support and in a coma. They believe he will live, but that family has been through a lot. The adoptive father is 55 years old and a very angry person. Everyone here walks on eggshells around him. One of the adoptive moms here from the U.S. is currently working on finding another place to stay because this dad has shown an open dislike of her 4 year old daughter. He scared us yesterday by yelling and slamming things around in the dining area while we were eating. We think we can wait it out in this hotel because we are hoping we don't have to be here much longer, but if it gets any worse we may decide to look for another place ourselves. We have been praying for them, the dad in particular, but it is hard to offer hope when we can't speak the same language. Please take the time to pray for this family.

Yesterday Rebecca and I had fun helping Juanita, the cook, in the kitchen. She gave us a cooking lesson, teaching us how to make the meal she was preparing for dinner. It was a super rich chicken and parmesan cheese casserole served in individual bread bowls. We also had a fresh green salad (my personal favorite). To top it off, there were two separate occasions for celebration which each required a cake. (Can't celebrate without cake, right?) One cake was needed to send off an adoptive mom who was finally getting to go home today. The other was required for a birthday. That is the third birthday we have celebrated here so far--the other two were Yamile's and Geof's. So the "going home" cake was a sort of tort with about 1000 super thin layers of crispy wafer with cream between layers (it really does work out to be about 1000 layers). The birthday cake was a rich, creamy chocolate. We had a little of each. Both were delicious. I really hope all our clothes still fit us when we leave this place!

Hope you all are doing well. Thank you so much for those of you who have taken the time to post your comments. It's wonderful to hear from you and it helps with the feelings of isolation that try to take over. Our love to you all.