Helen Marjorie Hemphill Hemphill

...from Guatemala, Guatemala, Guatemala.

Oh the circus we have been through...

We have to get the birth certificate of the baby. The don't hand it to you when you leave the hospital, the Dr gives you a form called the imforme (filled out at his office, usually given at your next check up). You get to take that form to the Municipalidad and pay them to regisiter your birth. (Lazy..if you ask me). So we go to the office in Zone 9 and they won't process because 1. we don't have two last names ( the name from our mother, and one from our father) and 2. we have the same last name. They kept asking us if we were hemanos (brother and sister??? What the....) So her name would be Helen Marjorie Hemphill Hemphill. So they send us to the head office in zone 1 because they don't want to touch it. We take a lawyer because we know it will be bad.

Side note: Our names would have been Austin David Hemphill F-------------- and mine would have been Julila Marie L------ S--------- De Hemphill. So the baby would have been Helen Marjorie Hemphill L------- (I took out the other names to protect the innocent). Lovely, huh????

We get there in zone 1 and the lawyer says "I see your paperwork is in perfect order. I don't see the problem." So he talks to the jefa (boss lady) and in five minutes has the green light to get the paperwork processed. So it is Hemphill Hemphill (his last name and my last name). The embassy took one hemphill off (I say they took his off and kept mine, hahahaha) and she has just one last name according to the United States. All of this because we are American and the big Adoption crisis in Guatemala.

(about the Guatemala, Guatemala, Guatemala...she was born in Guatemala City, Municipalidad of Guatemala, Department of Guatemala.) It was a joke in the car that her name is Helen Marjorie Hemphill Hemphill and born in Guatemala, Guatemala, Guatemala, people might think she has a stuttering problem. But no, that is just how it is on certificate.