Our Little Books

Today began with a trip into Tegucigalpa to get the Honduran passports for the children.  We left the apartment at 9am and were supposed to meet our lawyer at 10, but the location of the immigration office had changed since Carlos had last been there, so for a while we were lost.  Eventually, we arrived and since there was no parking Carlos dropped us off, and we entered the building.  I used my meager Spanish to explain to the guard why we were there, and we weren't arrested...I guess my Spanish is better than I thought, though it did take a while for him to really comprehend what we wanted.  After a few baffled looks, he realized that we were there to get passports for the children and our lawyer had all of our necessary paperwork.  We were led downstairs to a series of rooms, chairs and teller windows that makes the DMV look like a day in the park.  Our lawyer took us to the first window...not sure what was said or done, but then she led us to the bank to pay for the passports...the bank teller spoke some English, so that was easy to navigate on our own...then, we went to a new window and the guy looked at our documents, and told us we needed copies of the birth certificates, which our lawyer had just left to go retrieve...Carlos arrived after finding a place to park, and then our lawyer returned with the copies and led us into another room with more windows and chairs...since we had children we were led to the front of the section on the right.  Soon, I realized that we were in line (this was not apparent at first...there was seemingly no order in this room)...and there were two windows that we were watching for availability.  Finally, we went up to the window and our lawyer did all of the talking...the lady behind the glass scanned every document that we had related to our adoption...took a picture of Ashton...then scanned every document that we had related to our adoption a second time, and took a picture of Alia.  This seemed to take forever.  She finished with us about 2 hours after we had arrived at the building.  We paid the extra fee to have the passports expedited, so we were told they would be ready in about 40 minutes.  Because of the limited number of seats, only one parent could stay to retrieve the passports, so we said good-bye to our lawyer, Alicia and the children left with Carlos to get food, and I found a seat in the back of the room.  To my right was an air conditioning unit that was drowning out the sound in the rest of the room, which was a problem for me as the small lady in the front saying names of completed passports was speaking with about as much volume as a Q-tip crashing to the floor...then, it got worse...she went to lunch and I had to try to hear the names from a lady sitting behind the glass.  The good thing is in a sea of latino names, "Crossgrove" stands out.  I approached the glass and retrieved the passports.  Carlos and the family met me out front, and the kids were excited to see their own little books with their pictures in them.

After lunch, we were beginning to head out of Tegucigalpa when on a whim Alicia asked me to call the doctor at the Medical center that was recommended to us.  I called and asked for someone that spoke English.  By this point, Carlos had found his way to the Medical Center and was parked right in front of the entrance.  A woman who spoke excellent English answered and was very helpful.  She said that the children needed TB tests and that if we could get to the Medical Center, they would be able to get that done today...I said we would be there shortly.  They were very helpful and we were able to get the TB test done.  In the midst of all of this, we had to get more pictures of the children for different appointments, and we still didn't get the right wallet size pictures.  We're off by a few centimeters.  We got back to the house around close to 6pm...it was a very long day, and we are all exhausted.

When our lawyer told us last week that we would not be home before Easter, she had told us that we would not be getting passports until Wednesday, and passports were needed to begin the Medical tests, so everything is moving much faster that she had expected.  We are still in conversation with the Embassy for scheduling the exit interview, and there is some confusion on some documentation, but we do know that we will return to the Medical Center on Thursday for the reading of the TB test, and again on Friday for the children's physicals.  The other good news we received tonight is that the Embassy will be open for the first half of next week, so we may still be able to get our exit interview early next week and fly home before Easter.  We still expect to be here until the following week, but God is opening doors that we did not foresee.  Please continue to keep us in your prayers.  Well...as I said, it was a long day and I have already made this post too long, so good night!