A mad-dash to Guatemala...

posted by Gary on Thu. Sep 28, 2006
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As the 9th week of waiting for our referral, we were impatient and more than a little down. Then, on Thursday morning, September 28th, about 11 in the morning, the phone rang. An FTC (our adoption agency) staff member was instructing us to join an urgent conference call at noon. He was very somber. Cheri was certain that Guatemala was shutting down adoptions (which had been rumored). She called me, very upset.

Twenty minutes later, Cheri called back to say we had an e-mail from the FTC director advising us to spend the time until the conference call (45 minutes) looking up flights that would get to us Guatemala by the following morning! Excitement! Anxiety! I postponed my planned out-of-town trip for the afternoon and headed home.

After a couple of failed attempts to get on the conference call, we joined and learned that, yes, the Guatemalan president was threatening to sign an executive order on the following day (Friday) that would go into effect the day after (Saturday) that would block all new adoption cases for an indefinite period of time!

However, all of us on the conference call had a referral waiting... If we could get to Guatemala City (GC) by early the next morning and sign a power of attorney that would be filed that day (Friday), then we would beat the potential shutdown on Saturday and our adoption case should be able to continue!

There was no decision to be made, for us. The flights were very pricey but, if the connections were on time, we could be in GC by 10 p.m. on Thursday night. Cheri and I got off the call, made the flight reservations, flew around the house and on the phone and net informing colleagues and family, changing plans and packing. Cheri’s folks went to Wal-Mart to pick up a small suitcase-worth of baby products and then drove us to the airport to make a 4:30 p.m. flight from Tulsa to Houston.

By 10:15 that night, Cheri and I were checking into the Westin Camino Real in GC. We went to our room and attempted to connect to the internet to see whether we had a referral. A boy? A girl? Name?? Healthy??? The connection failed. But a half of an hour later, we were on. We’ll write more on the rest of the story later. For now, enjoy the photo slide show of the following three extraordinary days.