Dr. Visit and Immunizations

Hi, This is Lenna again.  We headed out to the doctor at 3 today to have Laura's TB test read and to see the embassy doctor.  Good news! Laura has a completely clean bill of health.  Bad news...she needed some shots.  She was very nervous about the shots, so was, in fact, surprised at how she didn't even know they had given her the shots by the time they said "all done."  She was a real trooper.

While we were in the waiting room we met a couple who have 4 adult sons.  They were there adopting a sibling group of three kids--two girls and a boy--who are all under the age of 9.  It was fun to hear their story and to share ours with them.  We exchanged blog addresses so we could follow each others stories. It was such a neat blessing to meet them.

Today, the weather started out sort of hot.  We walked to the big Unicentro mall and wished we hadn't worn warm clothes.  But by the afternoon when we left for the doctor's office, it was pouring rain outside. It's pretty much always cold in the hotel, and Laura is used to very hot weather, so she is freezing. We found some leggings for her that she can wear under her jeans, and that seems to be helping. 

Tomorrow the plan is to get Laura's new ID card and apply for her passport.  We hope to pick up her passport Monday.  Tuesday we should be able to get her exit visa.  If all goes as planned, we hope to be able to head home on Wednesday.  Yay!!!

Yamile and Laura with our contact on the ground, "Tia" Martha.  She is such a huge blessing!

The hotel has plates on their walls from all over the globe.  We brought one from Nevada to add to the collection. It's the larger blue and white one there next to Geof.

Twins?

At Unicentro Mall, sitting in a spot where Mommy and Daddy sat with Yamile almost three years ago.

This is for you, Annalisa and Rebecca...la tienda Carulla.

This is a little hard to see, but as we were walking back to the hotel, we saw two guys walking what looked like 15 to 20 dogs. They were all very well behaved.

 

 

 

Geof at the ATM. This is a place we have to visit every day, as there is a limit to how much we can take out, and we are expected to pay cash for many of the things we have to do...like the doctor visit, hotel costs, and taxis.

Outside Hotel Paris, waiting for them to let us in. Everything is locked up like Fort Knox here.  We have to ring a bell and they let us in.  We also have to be let out when we need to go somewhere.

This is a picture of the construction work being done directly next door to Hotel Paris, which is right in front of the parked car.  The hotel is the only small building left on the street.  Everything else is becoming highrise.

Momma and new son, Nicole and Simon.

Yamile, Drayven, Svea, Simon, and Nicole. Nicole is a single mom of three kids, one of whom is the newly adopted Simon. (What a suprise...Yamile with kids!!!)

Laura and the owner of the hotel, Katya Paris.

Another one of Juanita's famous meals.  This one began with soup, and then tender, boiled potatoes, a carrot/cabbage slaw, and steak. Yes, that is meat on my plate.

Geof and Martha, in the reception room at the medical building where the embassy doctor works.

Nicole decided she wanted to buy cake for everyone's dessert after dinner tonight. This is a Milky Way cake.  It was REALLY yummy! Very chocolatey (sorry, Nisa).

Laura had the silly idea to put frosting on our noses and take pictures.  So we did!

Yummy frosting!! Hard to taste when it's on your nose, though.

Birth Certificates ... and more

(This is Geof writing this time.)  We were able to meet with Martha (our contact person here in Colombia) this evening and received good news.  The Registry system is back online and we should be receiving Laura's new birth certificates (listing us as her parents) tomorrow.  (Thank you to those who prayed on our behalf.  God is sovereign over ALL things and the prayers of the righteous avail much.)  The whirlwind now begins over the next few days.

Tomorrow afternoon we visit the doctor for a physical and to make sure Laura has all the immunizations she needs to come to the United States.  If not, she may be receivng some immunizations tomorrow.  She's not a big fan of shots (who is?), so we're hoping everything is up-to-date and she will be saved the "trauma" tomorrow. 

If I remember correctly, Friday we will be getting a new Colombian ID card and applying for a Colombian passport, both listing Stark as her last name.  With the passport in hand, we head to the U.S. Embassy on Monday (why can't they be open on weekends, anyway?).  We hope to receive her visa that allows her to travel to the United States on that day.  If all proceeds well, we hope to fly home on Tuesday or Wednesday.

We very much covet your prayers.  While praying for the above-noted events and their speed completion, pray for us that we would be satisfied with God's perfect plan and His timing for everything - God's place at God's pace.

Time to post some pictures!

Milk...in a bag.

Hot Chocolate "mix". These are bars of cocoa powder, sugar and vanilla. You add them to hot milk or water and stir (a long time) to dissolve.

Our puzzle.  All done!

 

First morning in Bogota.  Sitting down for breakfast.

This is a fairly common sight on the streets...a horse drawn carriage.

Another amazing tree.

Our bathroom has two sinks.  Yay!

Our roomy bedroom. It has 4 beds.

Geof, keeping track of all of our miscellaneous expenditures.

This is a couch in the front area of our hotel.Yamile is looking at the hotel's photo album, which contains a photo of our family when we came to adopt her.

A delicious playdough meal.

The three fabulous playdough "cooks", Laura, Svea, and Yamile.

Walking through some parks.

Watching a very fun game of soccer with a lunchtime soccer league. These are construction workers on lunchbreak.  They take their soccer very seriously. They even have uniforms and a referee.

Good game!

Hanging out in Bogota

We are now in Bogota.  We arrived late Monday night, unpacked, skyped with our girls back home, and went to bed.  Yesterday, Tuesday, we had an appointment for Laura to get a TB test.  When we go back tomorrow to have that read we will also go to her appointment with the embassy doctor.  In the meantime, we are still waiting to receive her new birth certificate, without which we cannot proceed with any other paperwork.  We found out yesterday that the entire country's registry system is down, so until that is back up they cannot generate her new birth certificate.  We have been told we will just be waiting until that happens.  We are, of course, hopeful we will hear something today, but there is no way to know.  Your prayers in regard to that issue would be a huge blessing!!  Once we have her birth certificate we can apply for her passport and exit visa.  Can't leave the country without those!
Bogota is a beautiful city.  The weather is cool all of the time, and it feels so good to just walk around...something we do a lot.  We found a Christian Book Store yesterday and hung out in there for a little bit.  We were pleased to see books by John MacArthur and John Piper, among others, prominently displayed on the shelves.  The food here is wonderful and Juanita, the cook, is happy to see people enjoying her delicious creations.
There is one other family here, a single mom with two biological children adopting a 2 year old boy.  She has been here for 5 weeks and is still in wait mode. It can start to make you feel a little crazy to wait every minute for a phone call that never seems to come. Especially when you can't leave the hotel because you don't want to miss the call.  This gal, her name is Nicole, didn't know you can buy inexpensive cell phones here with prepaid minutes.  So Geof and I made a run to the store and picked up a phone.  We're calling it the community phone because any of us who needs to leave the hotel takes it with them so as not to miss the long awaited phone call.  That has freed Nicole up to go run errands and take her kids to the park.  It also frees us up to do the same.
So that is the scoop.  I would like to encourage all you dear friends out there who read our blog to notice there is a place where you can post comments to our blog entries.  We definitely struggle with feeling disconnected to you all, and would love to hear from you!  PLEASE take the time to connect with us, as we are trying to do the same for each of you.  We are also able to receive our email from here, so that is another way you can connect with us.  Thank you for your prayers and your anticipated encouragement via comments and email!

Sentencia!!!!!!!!

We just received the phone call we've been waiting for, on Sunday evening!!  We are scheduled for sentencia this morning.  I, Lenna, will go this time to do the honors.  For those of you who might not know, sentencia is the judge's sentence that Laura is legally our daughter.  The plan is that I will go with our translator and sign the papers, and Geof and the girls will hang out here.  Last time, it was pretty quick.  This time we don't know what to expect.  But if all goes as planned, we will be winging our way to Bogota on Tuesday. 

Now, I know the question in everyone's mind...so what's next, and when are we coming home?  What's next is that we spend a week or so in Bogota doing everything we are required to do in order to bring Laura out of the country with us.  That includes TB tests, awaiting a new birth certicificate, visiting the embassy doctor, getting her visa...those sorts of things.  We'll keep you posted!!  Today is a special day.  Today, we gain a new daughter!!!

 

Passing the time at a local park that has workout equipment.

The day was breezy, "cool", and beautiful.

The trees here are so interesting.  I'm not sure what kind this one is, but it's beautiful.There are also many mango trees here, much like you see orange trees in California.  We have to step around all the fallen fruit on the ground.

Laura likes flowers, and when she saw this patio garden she insisted I take a picture.

We stayed up into the wee hours of the mornig trying to finish the puzzle.  Just can't get that far and then have to pack it all back into the suitcase!  Gotta finish it!!!

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