Well, that was quick

Liseth Campos from Immigration arrived at our apartment about 9:30 this morning.  She came in, picked up the paperwork we had collected, took a couple of pictures and that was it.  Not sure what we were expecting, but thought it would be more involved.

When she left she was going to the church to pick up the final piece of documentation and conduct an interview with one of the pastors.  

I asked if there was anything else we needed to do and she said we just need to wait until they call us to say our cards are ready OR if they don't call within a month, we can call to check on the status.  

Thanks for praying us through this process!  

Fifth Time--Residency

Today we started the residency process for the fifth time.  I am happy to say we had all of the papers ready, they accepted each of them and gave us an appointment for Monday, June 8, at 1:00 p.m.

We have a campaign starting on Saturday.  We will, however, be done with the morning activity in time to make our appointment.  Keep praying that the process goes smoothly and that we are able to wrap up everything at our appointment on Monday.

Everything takes longer here

As I have mentioned before, everything takes longer here in El Salvador.  There's no such thing as a quick trip to anywhere.  Today was a perfect example.

The last two times we flew into the airport here and went through the immigration line, the agents have pointed out that our 3-month temporary residency cards were about to expire (8/19/14.)  Going to the immigration office to pick up our new cards was tricky this summer.  They tell you that you can start checking to see if the new cards are available within a month of their expiration.  Unfortunately, we were in the states from July 18-31 and then were only home one day (August 1 and the offices were closed for vacation) before leaving for Costa Rica.  

So, we decided that today was the day to see if they were ready.  If they weren't ready, we would still have a week for them to get them ready before our other ones expired.  We left after the morning rush hour and were sure to take our passports and other documentation; we drove directly to the location and . . . . . it had moved.  The building was repainted and the parking lot was empty--no sign on the door telling us where the new office was.  

Where it used to be: 

It took more than an hour and various phone calls to pin down the new location.  Turned out that it was within walking distance of the former location, but, of course, we didn't know that at the time.  

Where it was today:

By now, it was noon--thankfully, they stay open during lunch, albeit there are fewer employees available to help.  Even though there was only one person ahead of us, it still took over an hour.  My guess is that they printed up our cards and paperwork while we were waiting.

Good news is that we walked out of the office about 1:15 p.m. with our 9-month "permanent" cards that are good until June 26, 2015.    

May campaign--El Salvador

 A team  from Bells Shoals Baptist (Florida) along with two other individuals (Don Laity and John Ulrich) arrived yesterday.  We've spent the first two nights of the campaign working to help our church campus in Lourdes.  

Tomorrow morning the group will be sharing the "Respect" lesson in a local school, we, however, we will go back to immigration with our corrected residency paperwork.  We will catch up with the team at church in the afternoon before driving north for a family festival and evangelistic campaign in Coyolito.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

A Little Bit of Pain

When you think it's going to be smooth sailing, it just isn't.  As I wrote yesterday, the immigration office accepted all of our paperwork and told us to come back this afternoon.  Unfortunately,when we returned today, we found out that the document the church did was not the correct form.  Now, the big question:  why didn't yesterday's initial review catch the fact that the form was wrong so we could have corrected it this morning?  The answer to that question is "no idea," except that the forms are so similar that, perhaps, she just didn't examine it closely enough knowing that the next reviewer is responsible for the "details."

The good news is that all of the rest of the paperwork was verified and accepted so no issues this year with the Spanish translation of our support letter.

The agent gave us copies of the correct form, and we returned to the church to have them completed and signed.  Unfortunately, we didn't have time to get the documents notarized so we weren't able to take them back to immigration.  Luckily, there is an attorney who is going to notarize the papers at church on Sunday.

On Monday after the morning campaign in the schools, we will return to immigration with the updated documents and find out if they can review them "on the spot" or if we have to make another appointment.  

Every year I try to learn from our past mistakes so that, hopefully, the process will be error free.  Every year I have another "past mistake" to avoid for the following year!  

The saga continues . . . . .

Painless!

Today's stop at the immigration office was completely painless.  We waited less than 30 minutes to be seen, only had to copy one additional document, received initial acceptance of all of our paperwork and were assigned an appointment with another agent tomorrow afternoon.  Between this morning and our appointment time (2:00 p.m) tomorrow, they will review the documents in detail, especially our support letter and the Spanish translation which accompanies it.  Last year they required us to return to the translator so he could make several (illogical) changes.  We're praying that everything is perfect this year!

Amazingly, they didn't even mention that our expiration date is more than 30 days in the future.  Maybe that's no longer an issue for them or maybe (more likely) it is God's answer to our prayers.

Hoping to have only good news this year--thanks for praying for us; it really does make a difference.  I'll update tomorrow afternoon.

Residency Process . . . . De Nuevo (Again)

One of the results of time flying is that almost a year has passed since we renewed our residency.  Staying ahead of the process is essential . . . . I requested our support letter from Abundant Life at the beginning of April so it could be sent to the team in North Carolina that came to Nicaragua for the Holy Week mission trip.  I knew if I waited for the trip in May, it would really run us short on time.  The letter was translated last week, so it's ready to go.  We're supposed to pick up the documents from Vida Nueva tomorrow and then make a stop at the attorney's office to have them notarized.  I've made the passport copies already and only have to make a copy of the translated support letter and whatever we get tomorrow before we head to Immigration on Thursday morning with, hopefully, everything we need.

In reality, our residency cards don't expire until June 29; normally, Immigration will not let you begin the renewal process until you are within 30 days of expiration, but . . . . we're going early and are praying that they will let us get things rolling.  Between now and the end of June, we have two campaigns in El Salvador, will spend two weeks in the states to celebrate our 40th anniversary and have a campaign in Guatemala.  We're concerned that if we don't get our paperwork in before we leave the country, that we might not be able to have our temporary cards before we go to Guatemala on June 22.  

Please pray that we find someone in the immigration office who will be sensitive to our situation and allow us to begin the renewal process early.  Pray that all of our paperwork is complete and correct and that they do not "find" anything they want us to change.  

RESIDENCY YEAR 3

We picked up our 3-month cards in June and they were due to expire on September 12.  Immigration suggests that you start calling/dropping by to see if your permanent cards are ready a month out from your expiration date.  So today we stopped by Immigration to let them know we would be leaving the country on September 11 and, as a result, it was important that we got our permanent cards before we left.  Last year we had 3 different "3-month temporary" cards, so we were just trying to put them on notice.  WOW and WOO HOO . . . . our 2013-14 permanent residency cards were ready and waiting for us this afternoon.  

Residency Cards in the Wallet

Yea!  Picked up our 3-month temporary, but new residency cards this morning.  They are good through September 12, 2013.  When we go back in early September they should have our 9-month permanent cards ready.

Thanks for praying us through this process!

Residency Update 2

We received a call this afternoon from Immigration Services that they found another error in one of our translated documents.  I don't know why they called us--that really isn't  normal to give us a "heads up."  Perhaps it's because so many people have been praying for us during this difficult process.

So, before we go to our appointment in the morning we will make one more trip to the translator's office to pickup the corrected, corrected document.

Please pray that once they have this document in hand, we will be able to pay the renewal fee and have our pictures taken for our new cards.  Next step--they need to print our cards so that we can pick them up no later than next Wednesday, June 19, the day before we leave for the states.

Please also pray for Jeff and Paula who have run into problems with their renewal application process, as well.

Slow, but sure (maybe)

We picked up all of the corrected documents today after school and dropped them off at the immigration office again.  Unfortunately, they don't look at them while you're there.  Last time we went on Wednesday and got an appointment on Friday.  Yesterday, Jeff and Paula dropped off their paperwork and got an appointment on Friday.  Today we go and our appointment isn't until Wednesday--go figure.

Next week there is a team here from Texas and we will be sharing in the schools in the mornings.  We will have to skip next Wednesday so we can go to our appointment.  Praying that all will be well this time--we're leaving the country on June 20 and need to have our temporary cards in hand before we go.

Residency Update

We've been so busy with the end of school that I didn't update what happened at our residency appointment on Tuesday.  Unfortunately, our paperwork was in the "rejected" folder and not the approved folder.  So . . . . . we've spent the last two days trying to get corrections made so we can meet their requirements.  Keep in mind that these were little, little things--one was that the secretary at the church forgot to circle YES or NO. Because she forgot, we had to have the document redone, resigned and renotarized.  The other problem was with two of the translated pages.  So, we're supposed to pick up the revised pages today.  We're going to try to drop them off at immigration today.

Don't know if they will look at the new pages and approve them or if they will want to review the entire package again and have us come back later.

Thanks for praying for us through this arduous process!

Immigration Trip

We headed to the immigration office after my morning meeting with the Hilo, Aguja and Biblia leaders.  We were working on the schedule for the rest of the year.

It was just after noon when we got there--usually lunch time is not the best time, but it was the time we had.  We were close and it just didn't make sense to go all the way home and then go back.  Of course, we were short a couple of copies.  From year to year, you never know what they're going to want copied.  Unfortunately, when you need copies you have to get out of line, get the copies made and then get back in line.  We finally got our "number" about 1:00 p.m. and it was time to settle into the chairs and wait.  We hoped it wouldn't be too long.  They were on #5 and we were #8.  After an hour or so, we realized that there was only one person taking "our" type of number.  Anyway, we were called to the desk about 2:30 and it took him only a matter of 10 minutes to verify that we had all of the correct paperwork.

New this year--you don't wait for them to verify the paperwork.  Instead he gave us an appointment on Tuesday when they are supposed to have confirmed/verified that everything is in order so we can move to the next step in the process.  IF all goes well on Tuesday, we should be able to pay the fees for the next year and have our pictures taken for our temporary cards.  I may, however, be getting a little ahead of myself, so I'll just report back on Tuesday afternoon.

All in all, not a bad day--in and out in just a little over 2 hours.  Thanks for praying for us . . . . next prayer date is this Tuesday afternoon!

Last Day of May

Hard to believe, but here it is, the last day of May.  Not quite half way through 2013, but getting close.

Today we start the process to renew our residency for the next 12 months.  As always, I'm sure this will be an adventure!   We have a trip planned to Kansas City from June 20 to July 4, and, while we are there, our residency cards will expire.  As a result, we really need the process to go smoothly (I say that every year, but this year it's especially true.) So, we are planning to go to Immigration today with "all" (we'll see) of the correct paperwork.  If they accept everything, we'll be asking them to provide us with a temporary card before we leave the country in 20 days.

Please pray that we have everything we need (I know that this seems obvious because there is a list; however, it seems that every immigration official has their own, unwritten "list.")  Please pray that everything will be accepted and that the only thing we have to wait on is the printing of our new temporary cards.