The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

On the good front, Jason is on his way to Chicago. He will arrive here around 5 AM. This is our best option for getting out. Please pray for his safety, smooth sailing through Chicago, and that there would be no delays or cancellations in the flights. Nasko is doing much better and seems back to normal.

On the bad front, Kay is still sick and there is the concern of dehydration. The doctor is coming by at 4 to follow up. As for the papers we spent all day yesterday working on, the Colombian consulate has refused to send them to immigration because they were authenticated (apostilled) in the US. The best we can do is to get them here by FedEx on Thursday which is after our flight. So we very much need Jason to get here.

On the ugly front, we heard that another family has been delayed for much the same reasons. It seems that the Colombian immigration is very strict about the children of US adoptive families who return to Colombia. We learned yesterday from a US missionary friend here at the house that the US embassy in Colombia has a hands off policy for Americans if they have any kind of legal trouble. Basically they have been told that they are on their own. In our experience so far, we have had some good help in the way of advice from the embassy, but it seems that at a certain point, they back off. Our congressional state representative has contacted the Colombia Country Desk Officer at the State Department who is contacting the Colombian embassy. We’re not sure that will accomplish much at this point.

Keep the kids in your prayers as well. They are very frustrated and lacking sufficient attention as we work to get out of here. It is difficult to go anywhere as Kay and Nasko are restricted. This is a small house with nothing to do and you can’t just send them outside to play. I am sitting outside now writing this so some of them can play in a park next to the house. I will drag myself out to take them to get ice cream later.

This is all very unfortunate as our troubles are not representative of the Colombian people. We run into extremely few who are not kind, caring and always wanting to and looking for ways to help you. This is a bureaucratic issue that seems to be aggravated by the bad blood between our two governments. I would love to find a way to change that so that we can have better relations between our countries.