Montreal Here We Come!

It was August 1997. John was only a couple months old. This was our second long trip but we had not left the country before. We needed to leave the U.S. in order to process Alicia's paperwork for her immigrant visa. We wanted Vancouver, closer to Milton's brother in Seattle but INS once again refused to cooperate. We had to go to Montreal. Thankfully we had a supporting church in Toronto who wanted to see us and we had missionary friends in Montreal--we had not seen them for quite some time b/c they were never home when we were! We headed out and got almost to Detroit when we discovered that we did not have John's birth certificate. We had brought everything we had on Alicia but this newborn little boy was forgotten! Well at least we didn't leave him behind! So we drove back to Chicago and the birth certificate was sitting on the desk where I had left it. Did I ever mention that both of us tend to be absent minded!?

Alicia and Jordan Lee the son of one of our Toronto friends. The second picture is of the Qwan kids and Alicia and John.

We drove all the way to Toronto the following day. The border crossing was not anything to get excited about and we were soon visiting our dear friends at Chinese Gospel Church. We were able to meet with a number of people and show off both our babies!

Then we headed to Montreal. What a trip! I don't even remember details of how we found our friends, but we must have had really detailed directions. I don't remember getting lost, and I just remember their lovely home and their hospitality. The next day Wes took us to the American Consulate and to get the medical exam. Now at this point I had been working for three years in French and had had a year of language study. The Quebec accent really threw me for a loop. For example they wanted a urine specimen from Alicia and they asked me if she could do peepee in a cup. But I did not understand them. Finally they got it across and the answer was no! She could not pee on command! Sorry!

We got the necessary documentation and off we went. I think we were in Montreal 2 nights. We then headed for the American border, handed in our dossier and got Alicia's passport stamped. It was finished! Well not quite! We still had to do her citizenship papers but this was the first step towards that!

We stopped in Massachusetts and spent a few days--maybe even a week with Milton's sister and family, introducing them to the newest members. I'm not how sure Alicia was about eating a lobster, but she has since linked lobster and corn on the cob with Aunt Diana and Uncle Tom.

Tom had been the first to see John and Alicia. A few weeks after his birth, Tom was in Chicago at Loyola Hospital on business and we got together for a couple of hours. At this point we still had not visited my family in Oklahoma nor Milton's Mom and stepdad in Florida. But it wouldn't be long before we would head that way. But in the mean time TEDS the seminary Milton was attending was starting and we would soon be taken up with Seminary life.