Car Shopping

Last Friday, we planned to ride along with one of the orphanage directors to look at new vehicles for the guesthouse. We are excited to move forward with this endeavor, as the house will greatly benefit from new wheels! 

Our current transportation situation.

When he came to pick us up, he mentioned that we would need to stop and drop off adoption paperwork downtown before we went car shopping.  Sure, sounds easy enough, plus I’ve been wanting to see what this part of the process entails.  Let’s do it.

The words we say to families “your dossier was submitted today,” took on a whole new meaning. I’m glad we had this detour. It wasn’t an easy one, but it is another tangible example of seeing the “Miracle of Adoption” played out. It is not an easy process and truly only God can overcome the hurdles; hence the miracle. What a joy to see Him at work.

Let’s get onto how the day unfolded, shall we?!

We got in the truck with our translator and the orphanage director. We took off and drove for probably an hour. Traffic on the main road is pretty bad a lot of times (think D.C. traffic with no rules) so we ended up on back roads to get around the jam. Hot, dusty and bumpy are the trade offs for sitting in traffic, but at least we were moving.

We seemed to just keep driving forever, stopping at random places. The problem is I never know what is happening. Hearing and understanding Creole are 2 different things. I heard a lot of words but none of them registered to help me make sense of my current situation.

I'm learning Creole little by little and can put together a choppy sentence to relay a simple concept. Granted I’m squeezing my eyes shut working my hardest to dig up the random flashcard or workbook lesson where I learned “that word.” But there are a few things I can say and will keep working at it!

However, when I'm trying to understand others, I feel like I’m in one of those air machines that blows paper all around while someone stands there grasping left and right. The words are flying all around, but grabbing a couple words here and there gets me almost no where in answering the questions floating around in my head. In the end I feel like my brain is reduced to the size of a raisin only able to perform the basic functions of breathing and digesting. 

I trust that the driver knows where we are going, so I just sit quietly with the furrow in my brow ever deepening from squinting in the sun and harboring so many unanswered questions all day.

One stop was randomly to buy rice, plantains and other staples for the orphanage. A stop well worth it after I realized why we were sitting in a hot car for 30 minutes.  Soon we were stopping again and again, each time with someone jumping in the back of the truck. Was this planned, who is that, should they be in the truck, where are they going, while I’m at it, where are WE going?  Oh my poor wrinkled forehead. More questions piling up.

Also traveling with us was a giant silver box. I didn’t think too much about it, but soon one of the new men in the truck opened it up and our truck turned into an office on wheels. The silver box held our precious cargo; the adoption paperwork!

Finally, we were where we needed to be. We carried stacks of paperwork into the back of the building. Again, I just follow along and go where I'm told. We waited outside for a while and when we were finally next, they said that they wouldn’t accept the paperwork.  Excuse me. Please say it’s not true. Do you know what we went through to get here?

I was not on their list of approved representatives. We presented the power of attorney form, but that wasn't cutting it. After a while we went downstairs to a different office to ask for special approval to allow me to submit the documents. After much explanation, we learned that the issue was that the POA was in English and not French. Ok, that makes sense. Oops. Lesson learned.

Thankfully with a copy of my passport and a special blue stamp we were headed back upstairs with the precious paperwork in tow. These dossiers represent months of hard work competed by a family to formally apply for adoption and ultimately they represent children who will be adopted. The paperwork must keep moving!

We waited in line again, only to find out that the woman was not nearly as excited about our blue stamp as we were. Through conversation I didn't understand, something worked and soon the paperwork was on her desk!

It was many dossiers with 2 sets of copies of each one. She said that we must remove the rubber bands from the files because that was not her job. Ok no problem. Then she wanted my name, agency and phone number on all 15 files. Done. Soon we had momentum only to hit another wall.

We found ourselves waiting again.

What was the problem? Where was our other Creole-speaking representative now? We couldn't find him in order to figure out the problem. Once we understood the situation it was that the folders were too thin and not sturdy enough. There was some wear on them and we feared they would get rejected. What a roller coaster!

Again somehow we started moving again. God was answering our prayers! She flipped through every dossier, originals and copies. All 15 folders slowly moved along. Yes, we will be finished soon was all I could think. Well, I was wrong. This was just step one. The reviewed paperwork then went to another office where the necessary fees were paid and receipts given. Only it was getting close to the end of the day and people were starting to leave. All I could think was “no, please stay, please take our documents”!

While we’re waiting, let me set the stage a little more…Somehow when leaving the house at 10 am to look and cars, I saw no need to bring a book along today. Man did I regret that decision. I had a few Creole flash cards to entertain me all day but those quickly lost their appeal. We sat in an office with the light off and no fan. Thankfully they did plug the fan in but I can't remember which hour this happened in. We also did not realize that we would be gone so long so soon we were wishing we had eaten something before we left. Thankfully a granola bar held is for a while but that was hours before we realized this wasn't ending anytime soon.

One by one the files moved along and when the last one was reviewed, we wondered what they would have us do next. But just like that, the desk was cleared, step 2 happened in a flash and the ladies were touching up their make-up to leave for the day. Was this it, were we finished!?

As we sat in the office, we began to feel like these ladies were our friends. Not until the last 10 minutes, did one reveal she spoke some English and commented on us talking about ice cream and pizza. I wish she had revealed her English-speaking secret a little sooner. That would have simplified things significantly!  Oh well, more Creole practice for me.

We wandered back to the car thankful that the paperwork was where it needed to be and one step closer in the long process. We returned to the vehicle to find that the orphanage director had stayed in there the entire time. When I opened the door, a big grin came across his face and in his thick accent he said “welcome to Haiti”.

I asked him if he stayed the car the entire time and he said “yes, this was only supposed to take 5-10 minutes, not hours”. Talk about the patience of a saint.

Now that the day was over and it was rush hour, something told me that back roads were in our near future.  I was right. Tired, hungry and a headache seemed to accentuate the bumpy roadway.  

Soon we were stopped again. Where were we?? A woman brought out a huge bag of food scraps and put them in the truck.  Confusion painted across my face yet again. The orphanage director explained that it was food for his dogs.  Oh right, how did I not guess that.

Seven and a half hours after we set out to look at cars, we were home.

Car shopping was not in our day.

I also learned that it’s been a 2-week process to try and get the paperwork processed through this one step. I thought I had run a marathon, but I was the one who got to do the last few steps and cross the finish line.

I had a lot of time to consider my patience level and was keenly aware of my desire to control a situation. I want things to be easy, fast and make sense in my mind. Today was none of those things and in the end it’s ok. It wasn't exactly fun but slowly and painfully God is helping me look at life differently. I don't have to be in a hurry all the time; I don't need to know everything that is going on at every second.

I need to learn to sit back, learn from others, be still and not rush things along all the time. Life is not about my comfort, desires, ease and control. As I saw that today I'm hopeful that I can continue to surrender control and let God direct my steps and show me how to be content no matter what the situation.

A fitting phrase to end the day; Thank you Lord!

Maybe we can go car shopping next week.