We are here in Guatemala!!!!

Well, we made it safely to Guatemala yesterday afternoon and we received Savannah later in the afternoon. It was an absolutely amazing, emotional, experience, and a true confirmation to our hearts that God chose Savannah to be our daughter! We know without a doubt that she is our girl and that God chose us to be her parents here on Earth! We feel so blessed to be spending this time in her birth country and it has been an incredible experience so far...we have really seen a lot already and plan to do some more exploring this weekend!!

Savannah is adjusting so well...you would never know that she had not been with us since birth! She actually recognized our voices and our faces from the digital recording & baby photo albums we had sent her in her first care package way back in June 2006! Her foster mom played the recordings for her everyday since then and she always looked at our pictures and we really believe that it has made all the difference in the world. She knows that we are her mommy & daddy! She was of course very sad when she saw her foster mom leave yesterday and her foster mom was heartbroken too, you could tell by the tears in her eyes that it was very painful for her to say goodbye to her little chinita! But, we also know that she is very happy to know that Savannah is going home with us to join our family forever!

This entire trip has been awesome so far! We had our appointment at the Embassy this morning at 8 am, although we were asked to arrive at 7 am because another family working with our facilitator had a 7:15 am appointment, and the facilitator had our paperwork for the Embassy. Unfortunately, the guards would not let us in early with the facilitator and the other family, so we had to wait outside for an hour! Savannah was an absolute doll through it all, we fed her a bottle waiting in line and she fell fast asleep and slept part way through our waiting time inside the Embassy when 8 am rolled around. We were #20 on the list for 8 am appointments, but somehow, we got in and out of there really fast...faster than a lot of the other families. They called our name in the first batch of 5 families requested to window #10! Trevor said we better be ready and I said no way would they be calling us that soon...then they called our name in that first group! Awesome! God is so great! We also did not have any issues with our fingerprints...nobody questioned us on that, praise God for answered prayers! We were only asked a couple of questions in the little room and then were asked to wait until our name was called again. Then a few minutes later we were called to the window and we took our oath and signed some more documents and were told that Savannah´s visa would be ready on Monday after 3:30 pm!!

It has been a long, but amazing day and we know that God has been with us through it all! This afternoon we went on a trolley tour of the city with Miguel as our tour guide...it was awesome because we were the only family on that tour so we got extra special attention. We visited the Presidential Palace and had a tour there and we also visited a gorgeous cathedral right in the heart of Guatemala City. We also saw many of the different zones (zonas), some of the poorest and most dangerous parts of the city and we also saw some of the more affluent areas. Miguel wanted us to get a true picture of life in Guatemala and his tour really gave us the perspective. Life is so different down here and we are realizing it so much on this trip. We chose not to stay in one of the large, expensive hotels, but rather chose a quaint little bed & breakfast. At first it was a bit of a shock, especially to me and especially since I had stayed at the Marriott on my previous trip last October. But, after our first day here, we are so thankful that we chose this experience. It is wonderful to be in a home environment and we are getting to see what life is really like in Guatemala, our daughter´s birth country! We have been taking lots of pictures so we can show her where she was born.

Tomorrow we are planning a trip to the zoo and we have heard great things about that! On Sunday, our hostess is taking us on a tour of Antigua and we are super excited about that. We have not really decided what we will do on Monday, but I am sure we will find something to do on our last day in Guatemala City! We leave on Tuesday morning...our flight is at 6:30 am so we have to leave for the airport no later than 4:30 am! Yikes that will be an early day, but we are also excited because we will be arriving home in the late afternoon instead of arriving much later in the evening.

Well, that is about all for now from Guatemala! We will have to post pictures once we get back home!