Case Family in Hong Kong

We are currently in the process to adopt our son, Cristian Javier, from Guatemala. As you know, the international adoption process with Guatemala has recently seen difficult times and has left many families and would-be adoptive children waiting to be united. We are one such family and Javier is one such baby boy. However, as we write this letter to you, we are no longer awaiting the Guatemalan government, but the U.S. government.

We began the process to adopt Javier (by submitting form I-600A) in February 2007 and were approved for this adoption in July 2007 (by receipt of form I-171H, valid for 18 months from date of issuance). Now, 17 months after filing that first form, we remain in process to adopt our son.

Currently residing in Hong Kong (while my husband pursues a PhD), we arrived in the U.S. on July 8 for a 6-week stay—during which time we were expecting to make a trip to Guatemala to pick up our son. We found out on July 9 that the U.S. embassy in Guatemala had emailed us requesting an update on our fingerprints, and the subsequent issuance of a new I-171H form, indicating the updated fingerprints. This, they said, was the only remaining artifact necessary before we could travel and meet with them to be united with our son and bring him back home with us!!! We went as early as possible, on July 10, 2008 and had our biometrics (i.e. fingerprints) redone. This involved writing a letter of request for one free update on fingerprints. On this letter, we placed our current Hong Kong address. The attending officer looked at both our letter and our file and changed this address to align with our prior U.S. address. We didn’t think anything of it and went on to be fingerprinted. We then emailed an adjudications officer with USCIS, Louisville office to ask if she could please expedite processing on our case, as our son was ready to pick up—awaiting only the updated I-171H, detailing updated fingerprints. In this email, we asked if she could please send the updated form to our current U.S. mailing address. She replied in email format asking about our prior mailing address and if we were still living at that residence. We replied that we were not. Finally, we received an email from her saying that we would need an updated home study in order to continue. On July 15, 2008 we went into the USCIS office to meet with adjudication officer. We tried to explain our situation of currently residing outside of the U.S., and while in the U.S. staying with and receiving mail at our parents’ address. She basically told us our case was out of her jurisdiction and should now be in the hands of the U.S. embassy in Hong Kong. She said they would file our case away, not throw it away, but it was basically no longer the concern of her office. We had no idea that our adoption process would go on for 17+ months and that our home study, which is actually a document that details who a family is, not merely the physical layout of a home, would be invalidated by our moving. We were unaware that this would disable us from adopting our little boy who is now nearly 11 months old; we received his referral when he was just over one week old. He has been a part of our lives, though not physically living with us, for nearly 11 months. He has a new birth certificate and passport with our family name, Case. He is awaiting our arrival in a children’s home in Solola, Guatemala. We want nothing more than to go and pick him up and end this very arduous process in order to start our lives together! We plead with you to pray on our son’s behalf.

Our request of you: please pray on our behalf and that of our son. As stated above, we have spoken with and met with the USCIS adjudications officer. Our case is currently in her hands, and that of her superiors. We ask you to pray that God will intervene in our son and our family’s situation. Please pray that God will use Congressman John Yarmuth and Senator Mitch McConnel to be our advocates convincing the INS to update our case with the new biometrics, concurrently issuing a new and updated I-171H form. Once this form is in the hands of the U.S. embassy in Guatemala, we can bring our son home. We are not underhanded people; in fact, our honesty in this process is what has us in this situation in the first place! Please pray the USCIS officials understand that we are the same family they approved nearly one year ago! Our approval still stands. Changing homes does not mean changing values, beliefs, character, and ability to parent children, all aspects which a home study is designed to assess.

For those of you unaware, in February of 2007 we started the process to adopt from Guatemala. Over $12,000USD spent and 15 months later and we hear this:

May 7th in the New York Times:

Guatemala has ordered a one-month hiatus in foreign adoptions, to investigate potential fraud. A law that took effect in January created a government adoption authority to replace an adoption system handled by private lawyers. The suspension affects 2,300 adoptions that began earlier. The attorney general, Baudilio Portillo, said the cases, most of them involving American parents, will be individually reviewed, according to the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Under the country’s new adoption law, which took effect Jan. 1 to comply with an international treaty to prevent human trafficking, adoptions will be taken out of the hands of agencies and lawyers and handed over to Guatemala’s notoriously sluggish courts and the National Adoptions Council.

On January 10th we were told this by our adoption agency:

We have been assured by the U.S. State Department that the Guatemalan government will honor and proceed with adoptions started before December 30th 2007.

Some in the government who oppose the adoption process have decided to object to this “grandfathering in process”. They know that they can’t change the law, so they have decided to fight the system with a number of new regulations, knowing they will eventually be forced to comply with the law, but in the mean time they succeed in causing problems. The main regulation they have implemented is that all cases, new and old must (obtain an aviso) register with the Central Authority. As of this moment, a Central Authority does not exist. Therein you can see that changing the rules is merely a pretext to cause problem.

On April 23rd our adoption agency posted the following on their blog www.eaglesnestint.org :

Why can’t we get answers? The officials are in their offices, so let’s just pray they will do their jobs. All they have to do is sign the adoptions. Why don’t they care? The “Blame” is NOT with lawyers, or the home, nor SDI; it is with the officials in high places. Mixco civil register is bribing others and us in order to get a Birth Certificate they are asking for a laptop or $$$$. This is not right. Most towns the BC is given the same day or the next week, Mixco says 6 weeks or longer unless you PAY!

PGN has 44 of our cases. There is no need for them to sit there and not sign. The babies want to be home, the families want them, we want them to go and the officials don’t want to care for them. Let’s all just pray that this week all will be signed! SDI is hurting for you all. Nido needs your prayers, and Larry and I wish we could do something.

On May 9th we received the following statement from SDI’s Attorney in Guatemala:

The PGN has decided to stop the approval of pending cases. They have decided to conduct interviews with each and every birth mother of children in the adoption process in PGN, the final court. This is one of the new requirements by the Hague that mothers be interviewed. The current cases are supposedly “grandfathered in” according to the State Dept. and now with this, it’s almost like the cases are not grandfathered in. They have not given the exact order in which they plan to begin the interview process of the more that 2000 cases in PGN, however 3 of Pedro Cabrera’s cases are scheduled for this Friday.

As for now Pedro’s office is calling contact people and informing them that they need to find and brief the birth mothers and inform them of the upcoming interviews. We are confident we will be able find all the birth mothers, however there will be a cost involved in locating and paying the time and travel expenses of the birth mothers, contacts people to travel to Pedro’s offices and to Guatemala City for the interview. After talking to the attorney, we expect this will cost an average from start to finish of an additional $1,000.00. We also understand that the children are going to be with the mothers during the interview and there is that possibility that the mothers may be made to feel guilty and they may also change their minds. Please keep this in your prayers. We know that many of you have waited a LONG time to get your child and this latest delay is very critical.

We have asked Pedro several questions that many of you are probably already wondering about:

1.If the family decides to NOT pay the $1000 for expenses for the birth mother to come in for the interview, what will happen? If you do not pay, the mother does not come in and the case is lost.

2.If the family pays the $1000 for the mother’s expenses and she changes her mind or the PGN doesn’t like her answers what will happen? The case will also be lost.

3.If the Attorney does not get the mother in for her appointment, the case may also be lost. (We are checking on this right now) The PGN is notifying the Attorneys and they have to pick up the paper that tells them of the date and time of the appointment.

4.If our case is abandonment, what will happen? In abandonment cases, there is no mother, but there will still be interviews with the attorney, the child and Ana, the legal representative of Eagle’s Nest.

5.If the interview is positive and the case is approved, how long will it be before it’s signed and the case is “OUT”? At this time, Pedro doesn’t have any idea when the case will be signed, it might be next week for these 3 that have interviews tomorrow, or it could be longer, we just don’t know.

In January our orphanage also told us this:

If adoptions are delayed so that we are unable to finalize cases, we will have insufficient funds to run the children’s home within 60 days. Families whose cases exceed 6 months are sending childcare, but that is a fraction of the needed to care for these cases. Total cost for 60 children is $15,000 per month, which is $250 per child/month. Maybe someone reading this might want to help with childcare for one or more children during this very difficult and uncertain period. If so, please send a tax deductible check to:

Eagle’s Nest

310 W. Central

Suite 211

Wichita, Ks. 67202

It would not hurt for families to apply pressure by contacting the State Department, US Senators and Congressmen to remind them of their assurances to the families in process before Dec 30 2007.

Needless to say it’s been an emotional day around here…

Hello, all!!!

So, we have been here in Hong Kong (hereafter referred to as HK) for 3 weeks now! We have been opening bank accounts, finding an apartment, furnishing the apartment, figuring out the public transport, signing up for classes, going to orientations…seeking out a church, occupied to the fullest. Thankfully, we are now beginning to feel settled. We now have the internet hooked up, and are very excited to have the capacity to communicate with family and friends—you guys!

Do we like it here? Well, it is definitely different from home, but we are acclimating. We were very excited to locate a Pizza Hut in a nearby ‘village’. We are learning a lot: where to make purchases, how to get around, and how to pay our bills in this foreign land. In short, we like it more some days than others; it is a nice place that will just take adjustment time as far as daily life goes.

The praise of our Arrival: God has been very good to us. Thank you so much for your prayers on our behalf! Ezri did very well on the trip over (about a 13 hour flight from California to Hong Kong – 22 hours total). She only slept about 4-5 hours of the entire flight; we only slept 2 hours of the flight! (So goes the life of a parent, eh?!) But she really did great. She got upset and restless a few times, but nothing too insane.

Upon arrival in the HK airport, we waited for the flight attendants to bring us Ezri’s stroller; when they did, a piece was missing: the bar that holds the infant car seat in the stroller! After searching for the piece for 15 minutes, a crew of 3 flight attendants offered to help with our things in order to get us through immigration, as we could not carry the baby and all of our things without the use of the stroller. Thus, we were escorted through an unfamiliar airport. When we got to customs and immigration, there was a long line for non-residents—i.e. us. Our flight attendants spoke with someone working there and they lifted the security band, instructing us to step in front of everyone! We then came to baggage claim, our flight attendant crew still assisting us with our luggage. We were anxious to see if all of our bags actually made it. Jason saw our duffle bag come around the carousel and grabbed it. Not sighting any of our other items, anxiety began to grow—until, at the opposite end of the long carousel, we spotted all 7 of our black trunks, loaded neatly onto dollies waiting for us! (How fabulous!) Jason went and got them while our flight attendants negotiated with a baggage carrying service for us. All this took place in Chinese; praise God for our posse of Chinese helpers! They then escorted us to the customer service/ lost & found and explained our problem with the stroller piece. The airline opted to compensate us the equivalent of $100 US dollars to replace the item! The next big hope was that our pre-arranged taxi would actually be at the exit gate waiting for us. We finally got there and awaiting us was a man with a big sign that said “Case Jason” (they put the family name first here). We were thrilled! We then commenced to walk to our taxi where everything was loaded up to take us to the university—the place we would spend our first 10 days in country. <To say the least, God paved the way for our arrival. Sometimes we are surprised by the ways God uses, but, hey…if we needed to lose one small stroller part to get such royal service, fine with us!>

Finally, just a note about the God whom we serve: Listening to the song Be Still My Soul impressed upon us something to share. The lyrics read as follows:

Be still, my soul: the Lord is on thy side.
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain.
Leave to thy God to order and provide;
In every change, He faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul: thy best, thy heavenly Friend
Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Be still my soul: the waves and wind still know

His voice who ruled them while he dwelt below.

(Lyrics: Ka­tha­ri­na A. von Schle­gel, 1752).

In Psalm 46:10, we read: “Be still and know that I am God.” The psalmist here is singing a song of God’s great and very real provision; He is a faithful God—be still; He is a friend—cease striving; He is on your side—be still, worry not; you will face grief and pain—be still, be patient; He will order and provide—rest assured; He remains faithful—do not worry; He does not change—rest in Him; the waves and wind obey Him—be still and place your solid and unwavering gaze upon the Lord who is your strength. You will most definitely find a joyful end in Him!! Amen!! What an amazing word from this scripture written into song!

Be encouraged by our awesome God and Father as you go throughout your week! Thank you so much for journeying with us. We love and cherish each of you.

Jason, Melanie and Ezri

Clips of things here in HK:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3F-GJRsUnY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkyUxRKUaWM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi2TFaYYp5c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a6MsqjmQx0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SoVGTrcj4k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK63lpYFsU0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBfEAgrYIJ0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZZCRQ50flg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDHAB2oe_Js

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWsMOHvfxgQ

So, here we are…the Case family…about to launch upon a big adventure. We are soon to move thousands of miles around the world—to Hong Kong. We will seek to learn a new language (Cantonese); Jason will begin studies in management and entrepreneurship to earn a PhD in Management of Organizations (a business degree); our living space will shrink to around 500-700 square feet; we will become a minority family. Needless to say, we are in for many changes and challenges, much excitement, and great adjustments! We need you guys! If you are receiving this letter, whether in printed or electronic format, that means you are very close to us…people we love and who love us. We have a huge request of you: please pray for us!!!

A little explanation:

Why are we moving so far away? Both of us feel strongly that this is where God has planned for us to be— for the next 4 years as we pursue this PhD. Why China? The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology www.ust.hk is a world-renowned institution; this is a huge opportunity for Jason to get an amazing education and skills as a researcher and a professor. We see this as a time for us to build relationships, both as individuals and as a family, and to intentionally share the gospel—as we share our lives—with those around us. What’s more, one of the main things on our hearts is that God will be placing us in a city of 7 million people, 3-4 % of whom profess Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior—our mission is to simply (or not so simply) live out our lives as Christians before and with others who do not personally know Christ. This is our task as Christians no matter where on earth God has us. We see this relocation as God’s strategic placement of us in this city to affect people for Christ. ——

Because the truth is that we, humans are poor in spirit; we are weak; we are in need. God is holy; He is without sin, perfect; he demands perfection and righteousness—things that we cannot obtain or be on our own. This is the hopeless situation of humanity—the human condition. Most importantly, then is the true and real HOPE of Jesus Christ! He is the way that sinful man can have a relationship with Holy God! Through Jesus, this paradox is solved and, by accepting Christ as our savior, and taking upon us his righteousness, we become righteous before God…and He sends Holy Spirit to dwell in us. We have peace with God! Praise God! Amen….again…AMEN!!! “And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.” “…Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Acts 4:12, 2:21)

-We request prayers that God will help us to establish deep trusting relationships with those people we will interact with on a daily basis. Pray that God will help us to settle in the city, to grow our family and not to view this time as a passage, trip or vacation that we’re on until God presents the next thing.

A praise report:

We’d like to praise God and share with you some of his recent successes on our behalf: we sold our car for a fair price; we sold our house to another family from our church without agents and without having to list the property. Jason’s visa has been approved for the move to HK. God has blessed us with the financial means to pursue an international adoption from Guatemala (currently in process) and to have enough funds remaining to cover our living expenses while in HK. Thank you Jesus!

Confession:

We would also like to confess that we have been undergoing a great amount of fear, stress, insecurity, doubt, anxiety and loss, just to name a few of the emotions we wrestle with in making this transition. Please pray that we’re able to view this opportunity not merely as leaving home, but as expanding the body and influence of Christ. Pray also that we’ll learn how to connect, reach, love & serve a culture and community that will be very different for our own. Pray that we become more willing to suffer for the glory of God.

Prayer:

Please pray specifically for our family’s transition to overseas life; pray especially for Ezri’s adjustment and for her sleep. Pray for our health—in particular, that we do not get sick and that we remain healthy as we adjust to a new climate, new time zone, different foods, etc. Pray that we will be wise and bold in sharing Christ with those around us. Pray also for two families in particular: one family of people who know Christ, who can encourage us and whom we can encourage, grow together with, and become ‘family’ with, and one national Chinese family that is unacquainted with Christ, whom we can build relationships with and share our lives and the gospel with!

We love each of you and thank you for embarking on this great journey with us!

Love,

Jason, Melanie & Ezri Case

Pics of the Case Family Sendoff: