Family sagas update

Table Mountain. Climbing, bouldering, hiking.
We loved the opportunities in South Africa.

The beginning of December the report on the xrays told us that Easy Teasy's hips had not changed in the past year and we should be scheduling his surgeries for this summer. As long as all works to plan, he will have one hip the middle of June and the second the end of July.

Here is a picture of the bone cutting, shaping and grafting that will take place.  

We had a wonderful Christmas. It was certainly busy – especially for a Mom trying to make special foods and memories – but it wasn’t too busy when I look back on it. January on the other hand hit us in a whirlwind. January 6th El Padre was traveling for work and I realized that we could request an expedite on ZigZag’s US citizenship application that we had been waiting to hear back from for 17 months. On the 10th of January we received a letter that more information was necessary. A lot of the items were very difficult to prove in the Sahel – like address and the fact that his parents named on his

Yep, they were that close!

birth certificate are verifiably his biological parents even though the birth certificate was created when he was four years old. El Padre and I spent the next three weeks pulling together every piece of evidence that we thought could prove a piece of the pie. In many cases, we didn’t know what was possible in the Sahel, so it required a trip to the capital for both El Padre and myself. It was extremely stressful as we had to wait for other people to do their parts and help bring the information together. Especially with the fact that most paperwork had to be translated before submitted.

We are so grateful for family, coworkers, colleagues, and friends who went above and beyond to care for us and help pull these documents together. It was so wild for us two of our children had to stay with friends while El Padre was teaching and training and I was in the capital.

Then came the point of deciding when to call it. One very helpful piece of paperwork was missing in an archive somewhere, but we couldn’t keep stringing it out. We waited another week, but then sent in the documents (a stack of over and inch more of paperwork). So glad we did because the missing document still hasn’t come through!  This was a time of a lot of brain work, juggling and very little rest.

Then we had a much needed break. We had a conference in South Africa and were able to meet my parents for some vacation time before and after the conference. It was a breath of fresh air after so

On a boat to go see the seals

much stress (although we did have to drive on the other side of the road). During this vacation I called to re-expedite our US citizenship case and on the way home we heard we needed more documentation as to why it deserved expediting. So we hurried to pull that information together only to wait a week to get a letter from the doctors office – finally sending our letter in without it because we didn’t feel we could wait any longer (no thanks UPMC health system).

Just yesterday we heard our citizenship application was approved!  Now the difficulty comes in transitioning the case to immigration (the National Visa Center). There are still many steps and months of processing. If it happens in time, we will have a doctors appointment and embassy interview and immigration visa placed in his passport before the middle of June when we return to the US for Easy Teasy's surgery. This is our prayer!

-- La Maestra