Meeting with the Judge, and Waiting...

Lenna here.  Yesterday we received a call telling us that the judge wanted to meet with Laura and ask her some questions.  We dressed up for the meeting and headed out.  They would not allow more than two people, plus the translator to go inside the building, so I went with Laura.  Geof and Yamile waited outside in the fairly oppressive heat.  We were in there for about an hour, first waiting for the judge, then waiting while they figured out a few errors in their own paperwork, then listening while the judge asked Laura many questions.  They asked her name and birthdate.  Then they asked her who she had lived with when she was younger.  She answered that she lived with her aunt and uncle. They asked if she knew she had grandparents.  She told them yes, but that she didn't really know them. Then they asked her if her biological parents were here, would she go with them?  She told them yes, of course, because they are her family.  But, she said, we are her family now and so she will go with us.  They asked her how it happened that we requested to adopt her, and she told them all about going to the U.S. last summer and finding Yamile and skyping with her and with us.  She told them she was "contento" (happy) to be with us.  She said she was ready to go NOW. (Aren't we all?) They asked her what sorts of things we were doing together while we were here, and she told them everything we've been doing.  They were satisfied with her answers.  Every question they asked, and every answer she gave was carefully transcribed onto a form, which Laura was then required to sign, along with the signature of the lawyer and a few other people who were there.  Then we were done.  We went outside with the judge, who remembered Yamile and wanted to say hi to her.  Whew.  When we got back to our apartment we went swimming...again.  Did I mention how hot it was yesterday?

So now we have been told that the court has 3 days to put all their paperwork together, and then sometime after that we can sign our sentencia papers.  Then we have to wait for Laura's new birth certificate, which will list us as her parents.  THEN we can fly back to Bogota for the final steps we have to take to bring her out of the country.   Things are actually moving along quickly.  It was an answer to prayer to get Court 3, and to be called in so quickly.  Praise the Lord!

Enjoying our homemade bread!

Everyone helping with dinner.

Daddy and his girl.

 

Mommy and her girl!!

Fun Stuff

This is Lenna posting again.  We've been looking for fun ways to fill our time, and we came up with a silly game from a book I brought with us.  Geof and the girls had to get down on the floor and use straws to blow different items from a start line to a finish line.  Laura won the contest, and they all had sore knees by the end of the game.  But it was quite hilarious and involved a lot of laughing (not to mention a little hyperventilating!).

Lots of huffing and puffing and laughing

 

Then we decided it would be fun to attemp to make our own pizza, thinking the girls would enjoy helping me in the kitchen.  So we went to the store and tracked down all the ingredients, which is not an easy thing when everything is packaged differently than at home and of course is all labeled in Spanish.  For example, we spent a very long time looking for milk a few days ago and finally had to ask someone for help.  He pointed it out to us, and then we realized why we could not find it.  Milk is not sold in the refigerated section here.  It is packaged in plastic bags and sold on the shelf.  We were never going to find it on our own!  A lot of liquids are packaged that way here.  It's just not even something we would ever expect. So we tracked down flour, yeast, olive oil, and cheese.  By the way, they don't sell cheddar cheese here either.  The only types of cheeses we can find are white and usually very bland.  But they have Mozzarella, so we got some of that, along with our toppings.  We had to buy a cheap pizza pan and a cheese shredder as well.  It gets complicated...

 

Once we got all our ingredients together, it was time to start...except I had nothing to measure water temperature with (don't want to kill the yeast!), not to mention I had no measuring cups or spoons.  And the oven is measured in Celsius instead of Fahrenheit.  But we improvised and it finally worked.  It took awhile, so what started out as an attempt at lunch became an early dinner.  We never really did eat lunch.  Oh well, dinner was delicious!  Here is a picture of the leftovers.

Yummy.  Packed and ready for the fridge. 

 

A friendly competition.

 

The green striped building is "Carrefour", the store across the street from us.  This was taken from our balcony.

 

 

Also taken from our balcony, the little red awning below marks the location of our favorite lunch place. Notice, not only the cars, but the many motorcycles--hard to see, but they are there.

 

 

I took this looking straight down from our balcony.  I included my toes, in an attempt to add perspective. :-) As mentioned previously, we are on the 5th floor. The swimming pool is at the top of the building, on the 7th floor.  It, too, offers a phenomenal view.

 

Integracion

Our integracion meeting lasted for about 30 minutes, with the psychologist asking many questions of all of us.  She was very satisfied with the answers she received.  She gave us a big smile and congratulated us, saying that our integration period had gone very well and she was satisfied to approve the continuation of Laura's placement with our family.  We are praising the Lord!!  And we have learned that Court 5 is also a faster court, so please be praying we are able to get one of the faster ones.  Either way, we will stay in Neiva until our sentencia papers have been signed.  Our love to you all!!

All dressed up for the meeting

This morning is our Integracion meeting with the lawyer and the psychologist.  They are coming to our apartment to see how things are going and to see if everyone desires to continue with Laura's placement.  We are all dressed up and ready to greet them.  It is an exciting time, not without a little tension!  Please, continue to pray we will be given Court 1.  I (Lenna) think our adoption papers will be filed today, so then we just sit back and wait.  Oops, here they are!

This is Lenna again.  I guess it is finally time to fill you in on the interesting 3 days of travel it took to get us here.  It began with me waking up on Sunday morning with a stomach bug.  No problem, I just didn't eat much for about the next 4 days.  Everyone else was healthy and raring to go.  Annalisa and Rebecca took us to the airport for the first little leg of our journey, which was a flight to LAX.

In Reno

 We had a 3 hour layover and then flew off to Miami.  After a 4 and a half hour flight, we made our way through miles of the Miami International Airport, dragging our six pieces of luggage behind us, looking for the rental car place.  The fun started when we attempted to find our way through Miami with the help of a rented GPS.  It was all in Spanish and I couldn't figure out how to change it.  Geof finally figured it out and we were on our way, we thought.  GPSs are tricky little things sometimes, and I personally think they have a "fooled you!" setting, which I'm pretty sure I found. We ended up taking the "scenic" route, not intentionally of course. Every time it looked like we were figuring things out, we took another wrong turn and ended up on the wrong freeway.  We had to laugh, or we would have cried...we were so tired!  But, praise the Lord, we finally found our hotel.  I think we got to bed around 1 in the morning. 

Our rental car in Miami

Palm trees outside our hotel room

The next morning we dragged ourselves out of our very comfy beds...

(this was Yamile's very comfy bed...), and got ourselves ready to go.  This was the day we finally got to meet the wonderful people at Adoption by Shepherd Care who have helped us adopt both of our little Colombianas. I have no pictures of this event, because I must have left my brain back in my very comfy bed at the hotel.  I did get a short video, which wasn't meant to be a video, but I was apparently pushing the wrong button on the camera.  So, at least I have a 3 second video of these wonderful people! It was such a pleasure to meet them and chat for awhile.  They enjoyed meeting all of us, and especially Yamile. 

Next, we headed back to the hotel, got our luggage, and found the airport.  We were running behind, but we finally made it to check our luggage in. Then we headed back to the parking lot so we could turn in our car.  We checked luggage before returning the car, thus saving ourselves the 100 mile walk through the airport dragging our six pieces of luggage behind us again. Once luggage was checked in, we turned in the car and made our way through the airport happily luggage-free.  We were still late, so we were sort of running through the airport---easily done without six pieces of luggage.........you get the picture. So once we got through security, I called Rebecca to say goodbye, I love you, etc.  She answered, but she had just cut her hand with a very sharp knife and was apparently trying to stem the flow gushing from her newly inflicted wound when I called. It was an odd phone call, ending with Annalisa putting the phone on speaker and saying, "Mom, Mom, I have to ask you a question before you go! Should I take her to the ER?"  I asked if it was that bad, and they both said, in unison, "It's bad."

So I told them what to do, where to find the papers they needed, and off they went, while I had to turn my phone off because we were boarding a plane to go to Bogota. (I spent a little time praying at this point!) We taxied out to the runway, the plane revved its engines, and then the pilot came over the speaker.  He told us one of the engines wouldn't start, so we were going to taxi back to the airport while they tried to figure it out.  After an hour and a half of hanging out in the airplane, the problem was fixed and we were on our way.  But guess what? Because of the delay, they let us turn our phones back on, so during that time I was able to help Annalisa and Rebecca figure things out in the ER, and I was able to give my verbal permission to the nurse for them to treat Rebecca.  Apparently, the dr's office had misplaced the signed permission papers I had given them, so they needed to actually talk to me.  That would not have been possible without the delay.  God had a plan!!

Waiting for our flight to Neiva

On the bus from the airport to our plane

We arrived in Bogota about 3.5 hours later, got through immigration quickly, and found our shuttle to our next hotel.  Whew.  We were finally in Colombia.  We stayed overnight in Bogota and then made our way to the smaller airport for our final flight to Neiva.  That flight got canceled, so we ended up being delayed by several hours, but we finally arrived here, much to our delight, and were greeted by a familiar face...Sorany, our translator from the last time we were here.  Yay!!  She helped us get settled into our apartment.  The owner came and showed us around the apartment.  He is so nice.  He has provided us with everything we need, even soap and toothpaste.  He had stocked the fridge with bottled water and yogurt. The table had a HUGE bowl of fresh fruit in it, and there were bowls full of snacky crackers and cookies.  We felt spoiled. 

At our favorite restaurant, Tijuana, on Tuesday evening

So now we are truly enjoying our two Colombian daughters, and missing our daughters who are back in the states.  Thank you to all of you who are loving our Annalisa and Rebecca while we are gone.  We are so thankful for you all.

Our translator, Sorany, on the left, her sister, Maritsa, and their mother. We are eating at the little outdoor restaurant right next to our apartment building.

Geof, Laura, and Yamile.  The food is amazing. The building directly above and behind Laura's head is our apartment building.  We are on the 5th floor.

It's hot here!

Hi.  This is Lenna blogging. Wow, didn't expect to be so busy this time around.  We came totally prepared for boredom while we wait, and that's not happening!  It's actually challenging to find time to blog.  But we are truly thankful for that, as it is so much better to have things to do.  This time around, we rented an apartment instead of staying in a hotel, and it really makes a huge difference.  We have lots of room to move around in, and I have a kitchen...and if you know me at all, you KNOW kitchens make me happy!!! Believe it or not, it is actually cheaper for us to rent this spacious apartment than it is to stuff ourselves all into a single hotel room! AND I can cook! Did I mention that already?  They really have some amazing fruit here.  And Colombian food is so delicious.  There is a small outdoor restaurant right next to our apartment that serves huge portions of food.  It ends up costing us about $2.50 per person to eat a full meal there.  Breakfast is fruit, oatmeal, or yogurt.  Sometimes we go out for dinner, but tonite we are going to eat fresh baked bread from a "panaderia" here, with some Colombian cheese and fruit.  Then we plan to take the girls to get some "gelado"--ice cream cones.

With the heat being as oppressive as it is, the pool is one of our best friends.  We all enjoy that activity, and it gives us lots of opportunities to interact in more physical ways.  Communication isn't only by speaking!

 

We are all enjoying each other very much.  It is so satisfying to finally get to be with Laura after all the waiting!

Here we are with our two Colombianas--Yamile and Laura Daniela!

 

 

Just before we went inside to meet Laura.  This is the same building where we received Yamile almost 3 years ago!

 

Sisters...at last!!

Gotcha Day!!!

Okay, we are so eager to fill you all in on what has been happening since we left on the 7th to head to Colombia. It has been so crazy and busy that we truly have not had a single moment to sit down and make even one blog entry.  First, the most important news of all: we have our girl! It started out with us going to ICBF to meet with the staff there. They were to give us any pertinent information they had and answer any questions we might have. We were told we could either bring Yamile with us, or she could stay with our translator's sister.  We had been told we would receive Laura later that day, and we knew we would definitely want Yamile with us at that point.  The Lord graciously saw to it that we chose to bring Yamile with us for the staff meeting, planning to have her sit out in another room with a book while we talked with them. We got to the meeting room and sat down, expecting them to send Yamile out anytime.  I (Lenna) happened to look out the window, and who did I see but Laura!  So we asked if Laura was expecting to meet us right then, and they told us yes.  We were completely not ready, having been told that when it was time to receive her, they would bring her to us at our apartment. We had planned to take a video of our meeting, and to bake a cake and have it ready for her when she came.  It threw us and we did not know what to think.  We told the psychologist we had been told we were not receiving Laura yet, and she said that was fine, that they could bring her to us later that day.  But the more we thought about it, the more we realized that would not give Laura the kind of message we wanted to send.  In the meantime, as we were trying to figure out what to do, one of the staff called Yamile and just sent her out to see Laura, without any warning, or without even asking us if that was okay with us.  It took us completely by surprise.  So we just jumped up and followed her out as soon as we realized what had happened.  So there we all were, looking at each other.  I just walked over and gave Laura a big hug and a kiss, and she gave me a wonderful hug right back, with a huge smile on her face.  Geof hugged her next, and then he and I went back into the room to have our meeting, leaving Yamile and her new sister together to chat and get reaquainted.

After the meeting, we all left together and came back to our apartment to hang out and get to know each other a little.  Swimming definitely came into the picture (have we mentioned it is very hot in Neiva?), and dinner at our favorite restaurant.  So far, we are enjoying our time here, and we are definitely enjoying our new daughter.  Laura and Yamile get along very well and are clearly very happy to be reunited. Back home, Annalisa and Rebecca are eagerly awaiting our return so they can get to know their new sister as well.

Because it has been so difficult to actually get a chance to sit down and write a post, we are going to send this out without pictures.  I will work on pictures as soon as I can.  Thank you all for your love and prayers!