fo:inline causing text to write over the top of existing text

I am having problems with text overwriting existing text.  Here's what I
am trying to do.  I want my users to be able to create messages in Word
with any type of formatting that they want.  They will save those
documents as xml files, and I have stylesheets that transforms the xml
out of Word into FO and puts that in an intermediate xml file.  Within
the stylesheets that are creating my pdf document, I copy the FO from
that intermediate doc and place that FO where I need it.  Here's where
my problem comes in.  Every time I have a new paragraph in Word (each
paragraph is converted into a separate block), the text overwrites what
is already written.  As you can see in my example below, I have 4
paragraphs (including the blank line between the 2nd & 3rd paragraphs),
but when it is printed on the pdf, it write all three of them right over
the top of each other.  In this example you might think I could remove
the fo:inline completely, but anytime any formatting is done, those are
necessary because they will carry the formatting attributes.

 

(This is the line from my stylesheet that copies everything below the
fo:root and places it in a table defined prior to this)

<xsl:copy-of select="document('messagefo.xml')/fo:root"/>

 

(This is the FO that is created by my transform from the xml out of Word
to FO)

<fo:root>

  <fo:block font-family="Helvetica" font-size="12pt">

    <fo:inline>This is the first line.</fo:inline>

  </fo:block>

  <fo:block font-family="Helvetica" font-size="12pt">

    <fo:inline>This is the second line immediately following the
first.</fo:inline>

  </fo:block>

  <fo:block font-family="Helvetica" font-size="12pt"/>

  <fo:block font-family="Helvetica" font-size="12pt">

    <fo:inline>This is the third line with a blank line between it and
the second.</fo:inline>

  </fo:block>

</fo:root>

 

(This is output on the pdf)

 

 

Anybody have any ideas of anything I need to be doing differently?

Any help or suggestions at all would be greatly appreciated.  

Thanks

 

Cory Aadland