Casa de Sion

This blog is for you Pud, an attorney friend who helps us work thru this a year ago.
Many of you have been to our old location at Cerro de Oro. We had two small houses and about an acre of beautiful land that had not been occupied for 15 years. We were looking for an orphanage location two years ago when the attorney owner of this property called us and said he heard we were looking for a spot to locate the orphanage. We looked at it, loved the gardens and thought we had enough space to build more buildings and put in a playground. So we did a lease purchase. $20,000.00 for a year and the rest paid at the end of the year when we would get the deed. Well thru out the year, the attorney who owned the property next door kept telling us he owned half of the grass land which would keep us from having a playground. He also had his guardian chase the kids off the property every time they went out to play. So we got a little worried. Our atty. owner kept saying " don't worry ". At the end of the year, I called our atty. owner bunches of times to come from his home in the city out to the lake and let us get the deed straight and buy the land. I had a couple of work teams coming for the summer and wanted to get some work done once we had a deed. Our atty. owner never came or even answered my calls. Finally I concluded he could not give us the property he had promised and convinced my husband we needed to look eslewhere. So we did and found our other acreage. We went home for the summer and the orphanage remained where they were.
When we returned, the atty. owner called me and wanted his money all $100,000.00. I agreed to meet him at the property the next Sat.I went thru the whole above scenario and told him we were not going to buy, but would like to pay a reasonable rent rent until we finished building. He was mad and his reasonable rent was another $20,000.00 for a year on houses that were worth about $500.00 a month total. So I told him no, we would move immediately which we did. We spent time and money replanting grass where all the little feet had trampled it and replaced some glass as well as did clean ups. And then moved on with all the other orphanage crisis.
Well Tues. we , my husband and I, were served with papers to pay about $20,000.00 to this atty. owner. We had 3 days to answer. He also requested our bank accts., the ones that feed the orphanage kids, be frozen and that my husband and I not be allowed to leave the country until it is settled. He also said the orphanage was not properly registered. Man did I freak out. We straigtened the last one out first. The orphanage atty. assured us she had the paperwork to show we were properly registered. Then yesterday we talked to a Pana atty we use to draw up temporary guardianship papers and realized real quick he was out of his league. So I called the American Embassy for a big city atty. and got an answer machine that told me to read their website and leave a message. I did and they have yet to call me back. Then I called a friend who has lived here for 30 years and bought and sold many pieces of land and he gave us the name of a great atty. who also speaks English and is honest and ethical. We drove 3 hours over very bumpy road construction and met with him at 3. His first words after reading the papers were. Man this guy is a real prick. He thought we had a great case, said the judge had already refused to demand we stay in the country and he thought he could keep that from happening. He found 22 ways to overthrow the lawsuit and two criminal charges against this atty. owner. The atty. owner was petitoning the courts to have us evicted and we have not been there since Oct., plus the man was trying to sale us land he did not own. Sure hope it all works out. Hi going to draw up the counter papers on Sat. and deliver them to us on Sun. and then we will take the and file them on Mon.
After that we drove back over the same road work except this time they had dynamited the road and it would not be open until 10pm. Luckily i got out of the car to ask a guatemalan man what was happening and he rode with us and showed us a short cut over very hilly, bumpy dusty roads that got us home by 7.
Our daughter, sil and grandbaby have been visiting and leave today so gotta go. We are suppsed to get a 16 year pregnant with her dads baby and a one month who mom is nuts.