Izzie's Crazy Mayor

Hi everyone,

I got really excited when I read the headline in the newspaper this morning: "Mayors Agree to Turn Over Records to RENAP." Apparently, the majority of the disobedient mayors and the president of Guatemala reached a series of agreements yesterday leading to the implementation of RENAP in their towns.

Unfortunately, when I got past the headline and read the article, it mentioned that a few of the mayors are still stubbornly refusing to cooperate. The article then singled out one particularly crazy mayor who skipped yesterday's meeting with the president in order to take to the streets and encourage his townspeople to actually burn down the local RENAP office once it is established. Of course, this fruit loop turned out to be the mayor of Momostenango, Izzie's place of birth.

I'm not really sure what this means in terms of our chances of getting a new birth certificate. It doesn't seem like something that's likely to happen in a timely manner. At least for the next several days, it probably won't even be safe for Blas, our adoption lawyer, to go to Momostenango, since the townspeople in a lot of these places are staging angry and violent protests. I hope that they don't have a lot of stamina so that Blas can get in there sometime soon and get things done.

I guess this is all a moot point until we get out of PGN anyway, but Bernardo and Lissette think that we could be out by Friday.

Please pray that our case can keep moving! I do not want to decorate our room at the orphanage for Christmas!

Thanks for checking in,
Kathy

MP Interview a Success

Hi Everyone,

I don't have a lot of time to write, but Izzie's birth mom's interview seemed to go well with the Ministerio publico ("MP" - federal prosecutors) today. She was one of four mothers interviewed.

PGN Update: Our file still hasn't moved from investigations. Apparently, today is the "day of the lawyer" in Guatemala, and the lawer in charge of signing our file and taking it upstairs to the sign-off desk is taking today off to celebrate herself and the legal profession. I am not joking. The situation is quite frustrating, although it does bring back sweet memories of my working days, when I would knock off for the national "day of the sales rep."

We also heard today that the elusive files for the case against the orphanage will finally get back to the judge in Chimaltenango on Wednesday, so everything should begin to wrap up on that front. It was necessary for the files to get back in order for the judge to lift the hold on the passports and to lift the protective order that is holding all the kids at the orphanage. So, hopefully this means that we will be free to have custody of Izzie as soon as we get a birth certificate and free to leave the country and come home as soon as Izzie has a visa.

Speaking of getting a birth certificate....At this moment, the president of Guatemala and the 74 disobedient mayors are having a meeting about RENAP. Citizens in the small towns in the K'iche part of the country are taking this RENAP thing as a real threat, and in some places there has been hostage-taking, road blocks, and other civil unrest. I am praying that by the time we get out of PGN (hopefully within the next few days), there will at least be a pause in the drama that will allow us to secure our birth certificate.

Wish us luck and please keep up the prayers!

Kathy

A HUGE Delay?

Hi Everyone,

I am so sick to report that another HUGE delay is most likely going to get in our way. As you know, we are very close to getting out of PGN (it will probably happen sometime next week) and the next step is to get Izzie's new birth certificate with our last name on it. After getting out of investigations, Jaimie and I finally started imagining an imminent homecoming, perhaps within the next 6 weeks or so. Finally, we were going to be able to live as a family and stop enduring the incredible emotional and financial hardships which have plagued us for the past nine months. Well, guess again.

For the past year or so, Guatemala has been trying to centralize all its vital records (birth and death certificates, voter registration, marriage licenses, etc.) into a central database called RENAP. One by one, cities have been rolling onto the system, which basically has taken over issuance of these kinds of documents. The deadline for ALL cities to go on RENAP is this coming Tuesday, September 30.

The major problem: 70 towns, including Izzie's place of birth, are refusing to go on RENAP. Their mayors do not want to give up the autonomy, and most especially, the source of income that goes along with issuing their own documents. The president of Guatemala is very angry about this, and is dispatching the military to set up blockades to these towns to basically prevent them from operating until they agree to go on RENAP. The mayors have approached Congress about an extension to the September 30 deadline, but according to today's papers, Congress has refused. Nobody knows how long the stand-off will last or what the result will be. If towns concede and DO agree to go on RENAP, it will likely take considerable time for them to turn over their records to the central government.

So, we are stuck again indefinitely. The really, really, really crummy thing is that without a birth certificate, we are not yet Izzie's legal parents and therefore cannot remove her from the orphanage. So I will continue to have to live on an air mattress in the depressing, dank, damp orphanage for who knows how long? Several weeks? Several months? The hope of making it home by this Christmas, which was very realistic two days ago, now seems like a long shot.

Izzie's birth mother interview with the ministerio publico (MP) has been scheduled for Monday, but now we don't know if she'll be able to make it, since the roads between her town and Guatemala City might be barricaded due to this RENAP garbage.

I am hoping that on his birthday today, Keegan can convince God to work some kind of miracle for us.

Happy Birthday, Keegan!

Happy 4th Birthday to our beautiful little angel in heaven! We think about you every day and we feel so blessed to have been your parents!

Bye-Bye, Investigations!!

Hello everyone,

We got some great news today. The head of investigations met with Bernardo today and she said that she is satisfied and that the investigation will now be closed. She promised to sign her approval by Monday, at which time our file will be sent up to the director of PGN to await her final approval. Praise God!!

If all goes super-well, we might be out of PGN by the end of next week and one giant step closer to being Izzie's legal parents. We don't know yet whether we'll need a birth mother interview with the MP before we're allowed to exit PGN, or whether we can wait and do the interview later. Bernardo is hoping that we can get out of PGN and get our birth certificate before the MP interview, since it will be a lot more difficult for the MP to do something crazy (like "rescue" Izzie) if the adoption has already been completed.

Thank you, as always, for the support and prayers! Please keep them up, as we have quite a few more tricky obstacles to overcome!

Love,
Kathy, Jaimie, and Izzie

Progress (kinda, sorta)

Did you ever describe someone as the type of person who "never does things halfway?"

Well, sometimes I think things are only done halfway around here.

Today, Bernardo, two of his associates, and Blas (our original, orphanage-appointed lawyer) went to PGN for their appointment with the head of investigations for the great unveiling of the DNA results. Unfortunately, the head of investigations didn't bother to show up for the meeting. She let someone sit in for her, so at least the envelope was opened. Everybody present saw that the results were 99.99% positive, and all present signed a legal document stating that they were present for the breaking of the seal and that they saw the positive results.

This is good, because now the PGN has been legally informed (albeit a second time) that Izzie and her mom are indeed biologically mother and daughter. What is crummy is that Bernardo had planned to insist that the head of investigations sign off her approval of our case right then and there. We complied with what she required at our last meeting (new DNA test), but she wasn't even there to hold up her end of the bargain (releasing us from investigation and letting us move on to the final approval desk).

Bernardo *thinks* she will sign our case out of investigations on Friday. He is going to meet with her around 9 or 10 am Friday to try to make sure no more funny business or messing around happens. We are PRAYING that this happens so we can FINALLY get moving again toward an exit from PGN. Please pray with us that this happens. My patience is so very, very thin lately. Everyone around us seems to be hurtling toward home, but we are stuck in molasses.

I'll let you know as soon as I have any news!

Thanks as always for the support and prayers!

Kathy

More Waiting...

Hi Friends,

Well, the meeting that was supposed to happen on Wednesday to open the DNA results did not take place. It's a long story, but the meeting got postponed to yesterday (Friday) and yesterday it got rescheduled again for this coming Wednesday at 8 a.m.

Bernardo went to the Ministerio publico (MP) on Thursday and found out that those two sets of parents have indeed done damage to our timeline for getting out of here. The MP explained that they got concerned when they saw that parents were trying to get their babies out of the country by avoiding the court process, so they felt that they had to initiate their own investigation into each of the cases. The MP has also deemed it necessary to do its own birth mother interviews. Counting her social worker interview and all her interviews with PGN, this will be the fifth time that Izzie's birth mother will have to make a 16-hour round trip to be interviewed. I am really worried about the timing of this, since she is about six months pregnant.

This weekend is a three-day weekend in Guatemala (Independence Day is Monday), so there will be no progress or news on anything until Tuesday. It seems that all we ever do around here is wait (and wait and wait).

Meanwhile, though, here are some cute photos and videos of Izzie:

Izzie in her casita:

Here, Izzie is blowing bubbles at the b-day party of her friends Leo and Julia:

And here is Izzie's version of bowling!

Have a great weekend! Prayers to our friends in the Houston area who are enduring Ike right now. Please stay safe!

Kathy

Some Great News and Another Possible Delay

Hello everyone,

We got great news this morning regarding the DNA test. Lissette has just received telephone confirmation from the lab that the results are positive. What happens next: Tomorrow Lissette will receive a sealed envelope from the lab with the official, written results. Bernardo will take the sealed envelope to the PGN, where he will open the envelope in the presence of the PGN lawyer who witnessed the test. Then, hopefully, we will get a signature from the head of the investigations unit that will officially release us from investigation. Our file will then be sent to the head of PGN for our final approval signature.

New complications have arisen, however. (Don't they always?) Ordinarily, once you get your approval signature from the head of PGN, your case is officially approved and you are free to seek a new birth certificate for the baby with her new last name. The issuance of this new birth certificate signifies that the adoptive parents are now the legal parents of the child.

Here's the problem: The ministerio publico (DA's office) has just ordered PGN to place a suspension on all our orphanage's cases. This means that after we get our approval signature, instead of getting out of PGN, we get sent to the "minors' section" of PGN, where our file will be held indefinitely. This means no birth certificate, no custody for me of Izzie, and no homecoming for Izzie and me in the near future. We will continue the tedious life we've been living inside the orphanage.

Nancy, the director of our orphanage, is meeting with the MP today to find out why they have ordered PGN to suspend the cases and to offer them whatever information they need to lift the suspension. It is likely that the MP will want to interview each birth mother and review their files. Each case will probably be released and allowed to proceed one by one as they complete these reviews.

So, why has the MP decided to suddenly get involved after laying low for four months? Those of us who spend a lot of time in the orphanage are 100% sure that it's because of two adoptive families who came to town a couple of weeks ago in an attempt to make an "end run" around Nancy and the judge in charge of the orphanage's case. These families were tired of waiting for the court case to get underway (aren't we all?), so they hired a lawyer, who tried to circumvent the court system by appealing for help from the MP. This "woke the sleeping giant" of the MP. In fact, the prosecutor from the MP told Nancy yesterday that he felt "pressure" to suspend all her cases within PGN because of some adoptive parents who came to visit him a couple of weeks ago.

The whole situation is very difficult to understand, let alone explain in writing, but suffice it to say that two families have jeopardized, delayed...basically sacrificed the adoption processes of 50 other children in an attempt to get their two children home a tiny bit faster.

There is, fortunately, one ray of hope for our particular case. Since our case has been through an extensive, all-exhausting investigation already, Bernardo thinks that the MP and PGN may give us a pass. That is to say, they might release our case despite the suspension since there is basically nothing left to investigate. Bernardo will be working hard on making this happen in the coming days. There are no guarantees, of course.

Please pray that reason and compassion for the children somehow win out as this mess gets sorted out!

Thanks for your support and prayers. We will keep you posted!

Kathy

Puppy Love

Happy Sunday, everyone!

Today, the Coopers brought their newly rescued dog, Cula, to visit. Izzie is fascinated with dogs, but it has been a really long time since she has lived with Sandy and Chico, so she was a little shy. As you can see from the pictures, Izzie was VERY interested, but kept a safe distance. She DID, however, show her excitement by screaming "puppa" ("puppy") 60 or 70 times.



In this last picture, Izzie had pulled the chair cushion down herself to get a comfy view of the dog.

And in another kind of puppy love...Here is a cute video of Izzie playing with her "boyfriend" ZoZo. While Jaimie was in town last weekend, we sat down with the Coopers and decided that if each family puts aside $10 a month, we should have plenty saved for their wedding when they're 30 or so.

On Wednesday of this week, the PGN and we are supposed to get the results of the latest DNA test. After that, our case should get moving again - hopefully FAST. This week, we are also hoping that some progress happens in the court case involving the orphanage, as Izzie and I will be stuck in Guatemala until that stuff gets sorted out as well.

Have a great week! Thanks for checking in on us and for the continued prayers and support!

Kathy