Well, first of all we went to the dentist here at the Baxter clinic today to get our teeth cleaned and i have 8 cavities! i havn´t had those since i was real little! i guess that´s what happens when you stop using an electric toothbrush and don´t go to the dentist for a year and a half.
Beto and I have been here in Teguc. about two weeks now. Beto got a ten year visa! praise God!
but we need your PRAYERS becuase we are having trouble getting Santiago´s american passport, ironically. we had an appointment last monday. we thought we had all the correct paperwork. she asked for the literal birth certificate and i handed her what i thought was that. we had two different original types of birth cert. neither of which were acceptable. DON´T KNOW WHY! why cán´t they just acceptthe birth certificate??? well, she said, that´s ok. i can accept it with what you have. ok, not let me see your proof of your physical presence in the US. i told her, ¨that´s on that app. right there!¨she said, ¨no, i need like, transcripts, or something aboutyou that proves your physical presence in the US beofre movin to Hondruas.¨ i told her i honestly didn´t know i had to have that. she showed me the info sheets and i showed her mine that the office faxed me and THAT INFO HAD BEEN CUT OFF THE BOTTOME OF THE PAGE!!! well, she didn´t feel sorry for me. she said we had to have the documents and i have to make another appointment, the earliest of which wasn´t until june 11th!!! we can´t wait that long! ugh! but sh was very strcit and unhelpful, and the laws about this are so ridiculous. obviously he´s mine and i have my american passport. so frustrating.
sooo...she said, well, if you can´t wait for another appointment you can go up to San Pedro where you don´t have to make an appointment but then they send all the paperwork down here and the process takes 4 weeks instead of 2. san pedro is about 5hours away from tegucigalpa.
beto went yesterday to get the literal b.c. but they said we ahve to get it in la esperanza, and in la esperanza they said we have to get it in teguc. so what do we do? well, wait four months, they said! what??? and i thought we´d be home in april! guess not. after all this is Honduras! so we are making lots of calls and trying to figure out how we can leave Hondruas asap!
right now we are blessed to be able to stay with amber. she is so hospitable. right now we are going to be in teguc. until at least next mon. or whenver beto´s passport is ready to pick up with his visa, whichever comes first, and then hopefully we can get the b.c. here and take it up to san pedro. and hopefully we can fly out of here in about 5 weeks.
please pray that God will open the doors. we really weren´t expecting all this hassle, and just for a birth cert. if someone here at the us embassy in teguc. cancells their appt. we can go do it all here, but please pray that God opens that door. we´d reallylike to be able to make it to my family reunion in Laguna at the end of May, but now i´m not holding my breath.
santiago is doing ok. adjusting well now to the heat and humidity of teguc. he seems to have a cough and respitory problems but is doing better. please pray for our health in the midst of all this traveling.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
In Tegucigalpa
Here in Tegucigalpa we have had to put the baby in a bucket. Good thing he's not any bigger yet! There are no such things as bath tubs here, although there are sometimes exceptions.
We enjoyed spending time with an old friend who used to work at the Southwest School, and his mom and sister came along too.
The other day when we went to get Santiago's Honduran passport it was pretty easy. After we left there we went to pick up his authenticated birth certificate. We were pretty happy because we thought we were all done with the paperwork but turns out we had to go to one more office to get it apostilled or somthing like that. i guess it's like a notary, making it doubly official. of course to do that we had to run to the complete opposite end of the city, but luckily it's close by to amber's house. i think they should just put all these offices that are interconnected in one place, but i guess that would make too much sense.
so later today we have the American Passport appt. at the US embassy. ironically it won't be as easy as getting the Honduran one. we have to have a lot more paperwork and proof that he is ours, including pictures of us together all through the pregnancy and with Santiago after the birth. If you read this in time please pray for us.
Tomorrow of course is Beto's VISA appt. and if he gets it we can pick that up later this week, so maybe this weekend we'll be headed back to La Esperanza.
The American passport won't be ready for a couple weeks perhaps but once we find out we will be able to book our flight. Hopefully we will fly to Guatemala in just two weeks and from there to LA, in a little less than a month.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
an excerpt
well, this isn´t really an excerpt because i don´t have anything to take it out of, but i feel like this is a parenthesis from yesterday´s blog and i like that word...ëxcerpt¨funny word.
so yesterday we go to the immigration office, because here we are actually illegals. but that´s another story. we´re working on getting legal. don´t judge.
anywho, we thought the office opened at 7.30. but when we got there at around 8.30 there was a line outside and they opened at 9. when we get to the door, the man asks if we have an appt. We said no and then he said, well you have to go to the bank and pay for one first. I looked at Beto and thought, great! Amber did this before with you boys and she didn´t say anything about having to go to the bank first!
I told him that we didn´t and he just kept letting others go in front of us and ignoring us. and kept asking us if we had an appt. we did this about three times before he finally let us in and told us that there was a bank right inside the offices. so we waited in line about an hour before the bank that opens at 9 opened at 10. Not surprising. Then we paid and got an appt. for the next day at 8.30am. We went to ask exactly what documents we would need because there in the offcies i read something tht made me think we might have to go to the embassy´s first of each of our country´s to get our passports authenticated or something, but we were confused and found out too that we could pay a little more and get the passport the same day. the money we paid would´ve been used on taxi´s going back and forth again so we decided to pay a lil extra and save time too. this way we got to sleep in another day too! so anyways, the appt. was fast and we were out of there quickly.
but my point of this blog is to tell a littel story.
so we´re in line at the bank and i see this woman come in. she´s maybe 50 years old and she´s with a teen girl, probably her daughter. she goes over to another line, cuts in front of an elderly woman with a cane...the older lady doenst say anything b-c that´s the way it is here, but if i were her i would´ve used my cane! she´s also pushing her daughter in front of other people and pinching her arm to manipulate her where to stand.
a few minutes later she comes over and puts herself at the front of OUR line! and i hate when people do this and it happens all the time and usually i say something, so i gently tap her on the shoulder and tell her there´s a line...duh, like she doenst see it. and she very rudely says, ï´m a senior citizen, i get to cut. and i just stare at her and then look back in the line to point out an elderly man much older than her who didn´t cut, and i look bck at her and she repeats herself and than says,
¨Do you understan??¨ uuuuuuuuuuggggggggghhhhhh....yes, i understand that you´re RUDE! beto made me let it go, but it was very difficult.
i am looking fwd. to being in the states where people don´t cut, or do they?
so yesterday we go to the immigration office, because here we are actually illegals. but that´s another story. we´re working on getting legal. don´t judge.
anywho, we thought the office opened at 7.30. but when we got there at around 8.30 there was a line outside and they opened at 9. when we get to the door, the man asks if we have an appt. We said no and then he said, well you have to go to the bank and pay for one first. I looked at Beto and thought, great! Amber did this before with you boys and she didn´t say anything about having to go to the bank first!
I told him that we didn´t and he just kept letting others go in front of us and ignoring us. and kept asking us if we had an appt. we did this about three times before he finally let us in and told us that there was a bank right inside the offices. so we waited in line about an hour before the bank that opens at 9 opened at 10. Not surprising. Then we paid and got an appt. for the next day at 8.30am. We went to ask exactly what documents we would need because there in the offcies i read something tht made me think we might have to go to the embassy´s first of each of our country´s to get our passports authenticated or something, but we were confused and found out too that we could pay a little more and get the passport the same day. the money we paid would´ve been used on taxi´s going back and forth again so we decided to pay a lil extra and save time too. this way we got to sleep in another day too! so anyways, the appt. was fast and we were out of there quickly.
but my point of this blog is to tell a littel story.
so we´re in line at the bank and i see this woman come in. she´s maybe 50 years old and she´s with a teen girl, probably her daughter. she goes over to another line, cuts in front of an elderly woman with a cane...the older lady doenst say anything b-c that´s the way it is here, but if i were her i would´ve used my cane! she´s also pushing her daughter in front of other people and pinching her arm to manipulate her where to stand.
a few minutes later she comes over and puts herself at the front of OUR line! and i hate when people do this and it happens all the time and usually i say something, so i gently tap her on the shoulder and tell her there´s a line...duh, like she doenst see it. and she very rudely says, ï´m a senior citizen, i get to cut. and i just stare at her and then look back in the line to point out an elderly man much older than her who didn´t cut, and i look bck at her and she repeats herself and than says,
¨Do you understan??¨ uuuuuuuuuuggggggggghhhhhh....yes, i understand that you´re RUDE! beto made me let it go, but it was very difficult.
i am looking fwd. to being in the states where people don´t cut, or do they?
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
The Promised Land
The kids on the 4 wheeler were riding around at church after service. The kid who´s driving is a former student of mine, a 2nd grader. I have never seen a 7 year old driving!
Santiago is a pretty calm, happy baby(from Beto), but sometimes he gets angry and shows his independent side(that´s from mom).
Many would disagree but for me coming to Tegucigalpa is like coming home! the land of milk and honey, that somewhere over the rainbow, a land flowing with malls, internet cafes at every turn, coffee shops, fast food restaurants, Chili´s! etc. Of course all those things mostly have to do with food.
The best thing about Teguc is friends! We are blessd to be able to stay with Amber and we are having a lot of fun!
Beto and I have been busy getting passport fotos and all kinds of paperwork done, but we are ready for the baby´s appt. and Beto´s VISA. Santiago now has his Honduran passport. It took literally about 25 tries to get his picture right. We had to wake him up out of a deep sleep and one picture actually came out with him sticking out his tongue. We finally got an acceptable one but he looks angry! probably becuase of being woken up!
last sunday when we got into town we celebrated Amber´s Birthday at Chili´s, a new fenomenon here in the city. The heat and humidity have been difficult to get used to, esp. for the baby, which is our excuse for spending so much time in the malls!
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
a day at the beach...well, sort of
santiago has already learned how to make funny faces at the camera. Monday our pastor invited us to go to a nearby pool park with his family. the music was awful and loud, but santiago slept thru it for about 4 hours. it was a lot of fun and very hot!
Sunday, April 05, 2009
more exciting news
i want to share also that God has given us land for the Street children{s home! one brother and friend from our church has donated a large piece of land to us to build the home on when we return to honduras. God is good and we are still in bit of surprised shock. it doesnt look like much now of course but we are dreaming of how it will look with the home on it. it is across the street from our old house and ver close to the church, also close to the center. we are very happy. it{s still hard to beleive! excuse the bad spelling.
march update
Here I am again after nearly three weeks in the house. It’s been very difficult being inside for me, but God has taught me patience, trust in Him, and sensitivity to those who are stuck in their homes and beds for one reason or another.
After 13 hours of labor in the hospital, Santiago was born march 13 at 3am. I was in the public hospital, the best public hospital of all, so I’ve heard. I was in one room with two other women. We are kept to labor and push in one room and when the head is visible I had to walk across the hall, climb up myself onto another bed and push the final two times, and there is where they clean and fingerprint the baby. After that I was put in a recovery room with three other women and was going to be discharged from the hospital at noon, only 9 hours after giving birth, but later they decided to discharge me later that night.
Now I’ve learned how different my experience was from giving birth in a United States hospital, but at the time I didn’t feel uncomfortable there. All of it, including two vaccinations for the baby and iron vitamins for me, cost us about $7. The best part was having our missionary nurse friend Rhonda there with me throughout the entire labor and delivery. She stayed with me all through thte night and let me squeeze her hands, HARD, during every contraction. I think she had just as long a recovery as me!
We are doing better now, getting a little more used to the baby each day. I’ve learned that life will never be the same! For example, the other day I wanted to take the baby outside on the porch to rock him in the rocking chair, while reading a book and eating ice cream. First I had to take out the rocking chair, then dish out my ice cream. Great, I sat down and he started to cry. I never did finish my ice cream. Most of it melted by the time I could actually eat it, and I never even opened the book!
Santiago has proven to be very active. Today he slept about two hours, all day! And he hardly slept last night. I think I’m going to have to stop eating so much sugar! I was told that all newborns do is sleep. Hopefully he’ll sleep more in the night, but I’m not holding my breath.
Santiago has an appointment to get his U.S. passport at the U.S. embassy april 28th and beto has his visa appointment april 29th. Please pray for both of these.
After 13 hours of labor in the hospital, Santiago was born march 13 at 3am. I was in the public hospital, the best public hospital of all, so I’ve heard. I was in one room with two other women. We are kept to labor and push in one room and when the head is visible I had to walk across the hall, climb up myself onto another bed and push the final two times, and there is where they clean and fingerprint the baby. After that I was put in a recovery room with three other women and was going to be discharged from the hospital at noon, only 9 hours after giving birth, but later they decided to discharge me later that night.
Now I’ve learned how different my experience was from giving birth in a United States hospital, but at the time I didn’t feel uncomfortable there. All of it, including two vaccinations for the baby and iron vitamins for me, cost us about $7. The best part was having our missionary nurse friend Rhonda there with me throughout the entire labor and delivery. She stayed with me all through thte night and let me squeeze her hands, HARD, during every contraction. I think she had just as long a recovery as me!
We are doing better now, getting a little more used to the baby each day. I’ve learned that life will never be the same! For example, the other day I wanted to take the baby outside on the porch to rock him in the rocking chair, while reading a book and eating ice cream. First I had to take out the rocking chair, then dish out my ice cream. Great, I sat down and he started to cry. I never did finish my ice cream. Most of it melted by the time I could actually eat it, and I never even opened the book!
Santiago has proven to be very active. Today he slept about two hours, all day! And he hardly slept last night. I think I’m going to have to stop eating so much sugar! I was told that all newborns do is sleep. Hopefully he’ll sleep more in the night, but I’m not holding my breath.
Santiago has an appointment to get his U.S. passport at the U.S. embassy april 28th and beto has his visa appointment april 29th. Please pray for both of these.
more pics!
in some new clothes from uncle bruce and aunt romy, and g.ma and grandpa bill
he is three weeks and growing so fast! he eats and farts a lot. a true speaks!
pictures of the baby!
Tia Rhonda with Santiago...these are from the first week.
The first bath and first nail cutting! sooo exciting, i know!
a movie with daddy, and thinking...hmmm...
our great old friend miss lindsey came to visit with her mom and with miss corita they came over on my bday! i was very surprised when beto brought home a cake! i rally didn{t think he was going to bring me one since the dr. put me on a bland diet, but i had two peices and enjoyed them very much!
our wonderful friend amber came to visit and help us a tooooooon for the weekend. and she brought a home made sling in which to carry around santiago. thanks amber for cooking, cleaning, and watching santiago so beto and i could have a {date[ at the hospital. hahaha...love you! carrryin around the baby in the sling brought many funny comments from peoploe in the market. first, they made me feel like a sinner for taking the baby outside before being one month. they couldnt beleive it. they also asked me what i was carrying around and some didnt believe it was a baby till i showed them. one told me she thought i had been hit and the sling was like a huge bandage. i was thinking that if my front was that swolen, i certainly wouldnt be at the market! it was a truly unforgettable adventure, and good for me as it was my first time out of the house except for going to the hospital and dr.
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