Latest on the Cases…

Thanks for  checking in, I wanted to do a quick update until we find time in the near future to do an in depth update.  So I’m back in school starting the 2nd year of my PhD program.  I have one more year of classes, then qualifying exams, then dissertation if I pass my exams.  So we got back to Hong Kong on August 22nd from 6 weeks of trying to get USCIS in Louisville to authorize the Embassy in Guatemala to issue Javi’s visa.  After being told that we would have to return to Hong Kong and update our home study we achingly decided to come back without him.  We immediately proceeded with the homestudy update.  We were told during our homestudy interview to expect 10 more weeks until Bangkok could process our update.  Disappointed, we pressed on, then on the morning of August 28th we received a big surprise in our email.  It was an email from the US Embassy in Guatemala stating that Javi’s Visa Appointment had been scheduled for September 3rd.  Confused and excited we talked to our agency and social worker and both told us to make travel arrangements so Melanie headed back west to Guatemala that night.  Melanie has been in Guatemala the past week with Javi, she had a final “interview” which went well and she was able to pick up Javi’s Visa on the 4th.  They head back through Chicago where she will be staying Saturday night, the 6th (so the grandparents can meet Javi), and then she will head back here on the 7th.  Getting in here Monday night, the 8th.  Thankfully, Melanie’s mom made the trip over here when she heard the news and she’s been helping me with Ezri.  Melanie’s internet connection has been down in Guatemala, but she’s promised to post pics as soon as possible.  Please check back for pictures of the Cases + 1, Cristian Javier Case.

Javi at Eagle’s Nest – Melanie arrive

A long-awaited trip to Guatemala!!  It was so fabulous to go and visit Javi’s orphanage.  I flew into Guatemala City around noon on a Saturday, and was able to go out to Eagle’s Nest (Javi’s orphanage…located in Solola) that evening.  Arriving around 5:30pm or so, after 2-3 hour trip in a bumpy shuttle bus, I found myself suddenly more awake as we neared the children’s home.  I began thinking, “Oh my goodness…I am really finally about to meet our son…for the first time ever!”  It seemed so surreal….Javi was referred to us at the age of 2 weeks….and ever since, he had been (virtually) part of our family…but obviously not physically here with us.  He was in our conversation, our prayers, our dreams…but not in our arms—————but in those bumpy moments before meeting him, all this reality passed through my heart and mind, and the weightiness of this event began to set in.  I had just traveled for two complete days….from Hong Kong….to Korea…to Chicago…spent the night getting some final documents notarized and a few hours in a Chicago hotel….gotten on a plane to Houston….to Guatemala….and now I was finally going to come face to face with the little man we’d loved in our hearts for one complete year….yet never touched with our own hands!!!!  Amazing!

I got emotional at this point (which any of you who know me could have guessed, right!)  We were there before we knew it, and I helped get some things out of the car to take into the children’s home (as I’d ridden there with the people who manage the home).  The front door opened up into the office, which in turn opened right into the large area where the kiddos play, eat, watch videos, etc.  When I walked in and put my things down, Ana said, “Pase adelante…a ver al nene.” (Come/go in…to see your baby.)…And there he was…his main care giver, Flory, was holding him and had brought him up to see me.  She handed him to me….I mean, of course I was just overwhelmed with joy…those of you who have children know that those first precious moments…hours…days and maybe even weeks you often cannot look upon your child without overflowing with joy (which for me involves concurrent tears!)…it is just an amazing thing to be given the opportunity and privilege to parent.  God is good.  He is really good.

After holding him a few minutes, I went over to a carpeted area where the kids were all sitting or playing (some in bouncy seats, others in ‘bumbo chairs’, still others in walkers or just on the carpet) and watching a video.  I let Javi down to play with the other kids, and, after a few minutes of play, he bopped his head quite hard (on accident, of course) on the floor–ouch!!  He was screaming!  I picked him up to comfort him, and went over to a rocking chair to rock him.  Within a few minutes, he fell fast asleep on my chest.  How amazing!!!! (In hignsight, this head-bop was a disguised blessing that allowed us to bond right off….if that doesn’t sound too wierd!)

That is an explanation–in brief–of our first meeting.

Javi’s Orphanage – Eagle’s Nest

Well there’s a few things I’ve been unable to get Melanie to do since she’s been back home and they are sleep and update the blog.  I’ll try to get her to post more details as soon as things settle down here.  In the meantime I’m going to post the pics she took on her journey to pick up our son.

Javi Highlights for August 2008

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Hi!

I am Claire Boggs niece, Kristi. A few weeks ago I returned from spending 5 weeks in Guatemala working in the orphanage. It didn’t take long before Cristian stole my heart and became my favorite little baby. I thought you would enjoy stories of my time with him……Everyday for those 5 weeks I held him, played with him, fed him his bottle and rocked him to sleep. Every time he saw me a beautiful smile would fill his face and he would start waving his hands in the air and kicking his feet because he was so excited. He loves to talk. I would always echo whatever he did and he would smile and giggle. My friend called it our “love language”. When I was holding him, he would love to hold on to my fingers and  pull himself up. He would have a huge smile on his face every time he did like he was really proud of himself. He would do that over and over again. Cristian also loved it when I would kiss him multiple times on his cheek fast and then hug him and then do it all over again. He would laugh and laugh. After the first time I did that he started pulling his head in so that I would do that. It was so cute. His adorable little laugh also appears when he is lifted in the air. He loves it! He enjoys drinking his bottle in your arms but likes to hold it himself. He falls asleep easily. We spent a lot of time cuddling and it usually didn’t take long before he would fall asleep. Cristian likes to be active. When I arrived he was trying to learn how to crawl. By the time I left he was crawling all over the place.

I got to be one of the “mamas” that made the trip to the city for passport photos, DNA tests and physicals when Cristian went. We all had a baby for the day and he was mine. I loved every second of it. He was a sweetheart the whole day!

I attached some pictures that I took while I was down there. I thought you would enjoy them. He was hard to get to smile for the camera because he always wanted to play with it.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know how wonderful your little boy is. I am praying that you will get him soon! I would love to hear back from you if you have time.

Blessings,

Kristi

On us…

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So, we have basically been waiting on the adoption….and government officials, in hopes that they would go ahead and sign off on our adoption and allow us to go pick Javi up before we leave for HK. Now, we are near positive that this is not going to happen. We will go back to HK on August 20 (incidentally Javi’s 1st birthday) and have an update completed there. The CIS there will then be handling our case (we hope) and hopefully things will go very smoothly from there. This is bitter-sweet news. We are glad that someone is finally (prayerfully/hopefully) taking jurisdiction and responsibility for our case. We are disappointed that we will not be taking Javi home with us—the initial reason for our visit to the states for an extended time being to pick him up. —— deep breath————

So, we are pretty much heart-broken over missing our son’s first birthday. We’re preparing a b-day package and sending it this week, but it just doesn’t quite cut it, ya know? Perhaps we’ll celebrate it when we do eventually get him home with us. Anyway, please pray that God will give us strength, energy, and perseverance as we go back home. Please also pray that he will just keep us going during this difficult time.

Prayer Warriors Needed!!!

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.

July 2008 – Javi Health Update

Cristian Javier Case

 

DOB: 08/20/2007

• Weight: 17 lbs 5 oz
• Height:  25.5
• Head size: 17.5
• Foot:  3.5”

Cristian is doing well.  He is healthy. He is sitting up on his own.  He is crawling.  He doesn’t like the walker but he does like the swing.

 

Here is a note from my cousins’ daughter who is at EN this month volunteering…

 

Cristian is precious! He loves to be around people but is content to play by himself.  He gets excited when he sees someone familiar and wants to be picked up. He flaps his arms up and down and makes this cute little whimpering sound. When you start to pick him up, his face is filled with an adorable smile. He loves it when you kiss him on the palm of his hand over and over again. He gets very excited when you wrap your fingers in his hands and he pulls himself up.

Javi the Beautiful!

We’re wrapping up preparations to unite with our son! Things are quite busy and intense around here. We can always use prayer. We’ll add the health update as soon as we get it. Peace, Cases

Guatemala PGN Approval at long last!!!!

So, last night Jason and I called the PGN in Guatemala. It seemed like a good sign already when I spoke to a new lady whose name was Berta. She was quite jovial and when I told her Javi’s number to check his case, she asked me to wait a moment. She came back with a response that differed from what we’d heard from them over the past couple of weeks: “salida en la ventanilla”…which essentially means it is ready for pick-up at the window…what window and where, I have no idea, but it was good news! And, so I asked her how much longer we could expect. She replied, “2 days more”!!! WOW! We were both ecstatic and so glad we’d called.

Then it came….the email from our adoption consultant that we’d all been waiting for (and you with us): the subject line read: “APPROVED”!!! Javi’s case has been approved and released from PGN!!! This is the beginning of the end of the adoption process for us! We will most likely be able to travel to Guatemala to get Javi within the next 8 weeks!!! It is so exciting and emotional and fabulous….and overwhelming–all at once!

OK…that’s the huge news. Praise God with us; He has blessed this entire process! Please continue to pray with us that the remainder of the process goes smoothly without any unforeseen ripples. Javi was born in a town called Mixco; this particular spot seems to be a difficult one to get birth certificates from (Javi’s new birth certificate with his new last name: Case on it)…so, we’ll be paying an expediting fee to have it done in a timely fashion…hopefully that will be completed within 2 weeks time, as will the signing of the final decree of the adoption…and then we’ll have a last set of documents to fill out to get ready for travel. We’ll then await an appointment date from the US embassy…and that will dictate our travel dates. We already have travel arrangements from HK to the US for July…and traveling back east in August. Please pray that timing lines up for us to all travel to/from Guatemala and then back to HK together! Please pray for Javi’s transition from orphanage to home life….and the loss and grief he will go through as he has to leave the women who have lovingly cared for him for this first pivotal chapter of his little life!..and the subsequent transitioning into our home/family and building new bonds and strong/positive attachments!! Whew! That’s a lot of prayer, eh?!!!

Thank you for journeying with us on this. We love each of you so much and are forever grateful for you!

–The Cases

Guatemala PGN releases 230 cases on June 6th!

We’re hearing that 230 cases were released on Friday. We do not know how many were approvals and how many were kickouts (previos) at this point. We’ll be checking Monday to see if we were in the 230!

Joint Council on International Children Services Website

The official announcement:

June 6, 2008

Joint Council is pleased to announce that PGN has released approximately 230 adoption cases today. At this time, there is no estimate of the number of cases with previos, versus the number of cases without. Upon the release of cases by PGN, Joint Council will be providing estimates of the number of cases without previos. Joint Council extends its appreciation to PGN for its release of these cases. We will continue to work with PGN and key stakeholders in Guatemala on the review of the adoption procedure.