Home Sweet Home

We had a great trip home. We got to the airport in Bogota about 3 1/2 hours before our scheduled flight. We thought that was plenty of time. But..... It took every bit of that time, and when we got to our gate, boarding was already in progess. We were slowed down in large part because we had 9 people to get through all the process. We also had to go through 3 seperate security screens, passports, plus the adoption added additional checks. God provisioned for everything and we got on the plane just fine.

Our kids - new and old alike did great on the flight and we got to Atlanta without any problems. It took about 1 1/2 hours to process through customs, passports and imigration and then headed for our connecting flight home. We had 7 tickets for one flight and two for a later flight. Once at the gate we found there were 54 people on standby for our first flight - the flight we needed two more tickets to all fly together. This was not even a challenge for our God who provisioned for us to get the first two standby seats given out. We got to our house fine even though a major ice storm was in the forecast. We were all happy to be back home and all the new guys are settling in well.

They are meeting lots of new people. We have not experienced any problems since arriving home. We continue to integrate together as a family. It was a bit overwhelming for our new kids when we got home. There were so many new toys, they felt like they needed to play with everything at once. We have got to the point where they now know they can play with anything they like- only one thing at a time.

We met with all the people from our small group past and present 3 days after arriving back home. These are the people who have been are consistent prayer partners since we began this journey. We had about 85 people about 60 who were kids. Yession , Tatiana and Santiago did great with this large gathering. They are not having any inhabitions about meeting new people or going new places.

We had a great first Christmas togehter. We had our entire family together for Christmas and were able to take a new group picture with everyone. Today's post includes the new family picture taken at our church and a picture of the 8 children who still live at home.

Jim and Betty

Home!

Just a quick note- we are home!!! Travel went great! God provissioned for us all to fly on the same plane together. Every good and perfect gift is from above! Praise God. Tatiana is much better. Kids are in sensory overload now we ate in our house! More later

Jim and Betty

Happy Birthday Joshua

Happy Birthday Joshua- 10 years old!

Going Home

We got the visas. We have arrangements to leave in the morning. Right now we have seats on two different flights out of Atlanta. We all leave Bogota together however, Three of us have a three hour longer delay gettting out of Atlanta. We need your continued prayer in two main areas:

First that Delta would allow us to bump up or three tickets to the earlier flight. There are seats available, but not at the fare we booked. They can move us up to the same fight if they want.

Second, Tatiana is sick with fairly bad hives. Pray that the will pass quickly. We were made aware today late that we have had bad water in our room for the last three or 4 days. We think the hives are from the bad water, We have drank bottled water but our Colombian kids are use to drinking the tap water so they did. Tatiana got sick.and we didn't know why until today. Pray no one else gets sick and she has nothing more serious than the hives.

God Bless,
Jim and Betty

Visas Day 1

Today was our day to file for the US entry Visas for our new children. Getting the visa is the final hurdle to jump over on the road home and the completion of our journey- well perhaps not the end of the journey as our relationship with Yeisson, Tatiana and Santigo will be a life long journey. We reflect on going home and realize this is actually the beginning. We look forward to nurturing and growing this relationship and eagerly anticipate each new bend in the road. We do feel like getting home will be like a good rest at a roadside hotel on a long car trip. When we get home we will feel refreshed and eager to continue down the road again.

We were able to get our applications turned in, but not without one little challenge! At the US Embassy we were almost complete with our visa application process when the supervissor tells us one of the kids passports has an error! Yeisson's passport had Betty's maiden name misspelled. She told us if we could get it back to her in an hour, all three visas would be ready tomorrow at 3 pm. (Interesting side note: this suppervisor graduated from high school in the same town as Betty and I in Anchorage Alaska- small world!) We dashed for the car and zipped across Bogota to the passport office. David flew through the congested traffic and got us there in around 20 minutes. He ran in the passport office while we waited in the car. He was back in the car in only 5 minutes with a corrected passport. He is the guy to have on your team down here! WOW! We got back to the Embassy in about another 20 minutes. Then just David and I ran for the embassy! I goaded him a bit and said I'm 50, you're a young man ,we can run faster! So we did- boy did I regret it!!! At 9000 feet altitude a 700 to 800 yard sprint left my lungs SCREAMING! But it all ended well, we were told the visas would all be ready tomorrow. YEE HAW! God has been so gracious again today. We are so blessed.

Later we tried to change our tickets to Thursday from Friday, but as of right now there are not enough seats available. Friday is also GREAT!

We capped off the day by visiting Unicentro for ice cream cones at Crepes and Waffles. Pictures today are of one of our many games of UNO and some of us enjoying ice cream.

God bless,

Jim and Betty

God is Faithful

God is faithful. This is something we have stood upon for a very long time. I found myself thinking this simple statement over and over today. We had a very successful day and accomplished everything today we set out to complete. Jim left to get the birth certificates at 7 am. 7 1/2 hours later we had them and were arriving at the passport office to link up with Betty and the kids. Nothing went wrong - it was all very smooth thanks to our lawyer Oscar. It just took a long time because we needed to get birth certificates from two different places. It went very well.

God continues to show us just how much He is in control of all the details. We had been told that the courts closed after today - which is true. But God interviened at just the right time last Friday. While I was waiting at the second location for birth certificates, Oscar informs me that all the birth certificate offices in Colombia are closed tomorrow! They are celebrating their 40th anniversary or something like that. If we had not recieved the birth certificates today we could not have left on time this Friday! When Oscar dropped this little fact to me I was absolutely floored as I realized just how much my Heavenly Father is in control of all the details and He is so clearly working all things together for our good. We praise Him and give Him all the glory.

In the passport office we again saw things work out in an amazing way. We walked in to the passport office and saw around 100 to 120 people in line in front of us. 15 minutes later we were on our way out the door with the three passports in hand and the waiting room was still filled with the same 100 to 120 people! WOW. I know a lot of the speed with the passports was due to Oscar and David, however, we credit our Lord.

The doctors visit went well and so now all we need to accomplish is the visa. We put in our request for this tomorrow and should pick them up on Wednesday. If this is all acomplished and if there is space on the Thursday flight for us, there is chance we could leave one day early. Either way, to quote an e-mail Betty sent today, "We consider it all joy to leave on Friday".

Photos today are of the crowded waiting room and us at the passport window without waiting in the line!

God Bless,

Jim and Betty

Praying for a Smooth Monday

This is the night before the crazy hectic Monday to come. But before we talk about tomorrow, we want to reach out to our small group Bible study back home. They are meeting as I type this note lifting up all our final needs before the throne of God. We so much appreciate their faithfullness to pray for us over the last weeks. It has encouraged us immeasurably knowing we have you as our prayer warriors back home- thanks to the Keeleys, Fords, Moldrups and Dugans. We also thank all of the rest who have encouraged us, prayed with us and loved us. Thanks also to our new friends we have met in this journey, we have been particularly enouraged by the Hagertys and Woods. Thanks to our church family back home. We covet your prayers especially tonight and tomorrow. They have a very busy and ambitious day planned for us:

Jim leaves with our lawyer, Oscar at 7 am to go get the new birth cirtificates for the kids. We then link up with Betty and the 3 new kids to get passports around noon. Once that is complete we will all wisk away to get the kids medical exams. If this is all accomplished we will apply for the US entry visa on Tuesday and pick them up on Wednesday. Please pray this is all accomplished in such a way that God is glorified.

God Bless,
Jim and Betty

Growing together

Today was mostly another day of waiting, but this is different. We know we begin to finalize things on Monday- so the waiting this time seams to have more purpose than when we were waiting on court.

We are continuing the process of growing together as a family. You can see from todays pictures all the kids are growing together and we are seeing less and less two groups. They are steadily becoming one family. What a blessing to behold. This is happening faster that we could have hoped.

We walked the mall a bit today and stopped and had ice cream again- one of the bargins we have found. We get 9 two scoop waffle cones for about $15. can't match that at home!

We go after birth cirtificates on Monday at 7 am - please remain in prayer this will go smoothly.

God bless,

Jim and Betty

Sentencia!

May the great Lord God Almighty be praised. We had our court date today- finally. We know this only came about by the intervention of our mighty God. We thank all of you through out the country who have been praying for us and this court date. We went to bed last night discouraged as we were expecting to know our court date a day head of time. When the call did not come last night, we confess we were greatly discouraged and Betty, Kaitlyn and I wept. We knew and still know that God is in control, but we did allow Satan to discourage us. It is very hard here when you wait each day for the court hearing and no word comes. We had reached the point where we rose in the morning and counted down the hours until bed so we could move on to the next day and hopefully our court hearing. The last few days have been sooo long.

Today was the last possible day for our court date that would allow us all to go home together. We did not know how we were going to handle splitting up to come home. Betty called Lucia (Children's Hope rep in Colombia) after lunch to ask for some help getting our laundry done. She said Oscar (lawyer) was in Soacha trying to get us a date. Lucia said she would call back in an hour after Oscar called and then we would work out the laundry. The call came and Lucia said we had our hearing TODAY. She would pick Betty up in 10 minutes, they would start the laundry and head for the court in Soacha. Everything went --- well it went. Here is how Betty's time went! First when she got to Lucia's she got stuck in the elevator!! Nobody answered the alarm so they finally called Lucias son David and he came and pried the elevator door open so they could head to court. All she could think about was how she could be stuck in an elevator any other day but not when it is going to cause her to miss court! Once at the court in Soacha, they found all the documents were wrong and the court was closing. Somehow our lawyer Oscar convinced them to redo the forms and the Judge was gracious enough to stay around to sign the new decree. All of this in the midst of the hardest downpour we have we ever seen.

The call from Lucia was such an amazing blessing at a time we were struggling the most. Along with all of you, we have been in prayer- often. We have prayed with the children as well. Our immediate response was tears of joy, much hugging and we took the time to remind our children that God is faithful and stealing the line from Facing The Giants, we reminded them that nothing is impossible with God. This is a day we will all remember as a great example of how God answers prayer. At lunch when we prayed today, we asked for the court date and prayed that God would grant a miracle and grant our court date even today. I am reminded of Isaiah 40:31

"but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. "

We feel that the Lord has renewed our strength. Thanks to each of you for your prayers.

So what now? We have 4 things to acomplish next week. We have to have get new birth cirtificates issued, Medical exams at the US Consulate, Passports and lastly, visas from the US Consulate. We are scheduled to take care of birth cirtificates at 7 am monday and the medical exams are at 12 noon. This is normally a 4 day process so pray everything goes well and we will be on our scheduled flight next Friday morning. God is so great.

God bless each of you we appreciate you more than we can say.
Jim and Betty

Happy Birthday Ashley

Happy Birthday Ashley! 5 Years old today.

Happy Birthday Matthew

We just want to wish Matthew a very Happy Birthday! 8 years old today.

Fruit, Rides and the Park

Today we tried a new Colombian fruit called Granadilla. We had heard about it from other people and were told it is a favorite of Colombian children. Check it out in the pictures for today. It looks really slimey and looks like - well I'd rather not say what it looks like. You can use your own imagintion. If you can get past what it looks like it is not bad. Crunchy seeds- with a citrus taste. Yummmm

We also went into an arcade in the mall that we discovered yesterday while we were getting passport photos. Kids had a great time. We had an encouraging note left on our blog yesterday- we hope Beth is right! Please keep our court date in your prayer. God bless each of you.

Jim and Betty y ninos

Still Waiting

 Today we are still waiting on our court date. Hopefully the date will break really soon! Betty and Kaitlyn ventured out today to find a souvenier shop called Maku. We had three sets of directions and in the end went with the Hagerty's directions - they made it! Jim sat in the appartment with the younger kids and worried about them on the streets of Bogota by themselves! They made it back fine with out any adventure or difficulty. However, they got back to the appartment to find me in melt down with worry. David had called about 20 minutes after they left trying to set up for us to go and get passport and visa photos for the new kids. They got back 20 minutes after we were to go for the photos! Fortunately, David was delayed getting to our location for the link up. All ended well, Christ told us not to worry- so why didn't I listen!? it was good to make progress even if it was only photos.

We had chance to start talking to family and friends at home yesterday. Our son Kevin told us about a program called SKYPE. If you are still waiting to travel to Colombia, you must download SKYPE. It allows you to talk via the internet to any other computer in the world if they have speakers and a microphone (for free). We have talked to family back home about 10 times in the last 24 hours. It is such an encouragement to talk to folks back home - it only took about 5 minutes to set it up on our lap top.

Please continue to lift up our court date in your prayers,

God bless,

Jim and Betty

Lazy Sunday

Today we went for a walk about the middle of the day - that is about it! They close off one direction of the main street in front of our apartment for walkers and bicycles. We took advantage of the reduced auto emmission to enjoy a walk together. Unfortunately, we went a bit too far and some of the kids were hurting by the time we got back. Tommorrow is a holiday here so nothing can progress until Tuesday. Here are a few Christmas decorations we have seen - including the red tree I mentioned yesterday. We may not post tomorrow unless something comes up. We appreciate your prayers so much!

God Bless.

Jim and Betty

Winter in Bogota

Today we mostly just hung around the apartment. We did go through the mall today and looked at the the Christmas decorations. we'll share some of those images on another day. Have you ever seen a red Christmas tree? Neither had we - now you have something to eagerly anticipate until we post a picture of it in the next few days. The encouraging thing in the Christmas season down here is that Christ has not been stripped out of the public sector. There are nativity scenes absolutely everywhere you go.

As promised a couple of days ago the photos today are of winter in Bogota.

God bless.

Jim and Betty