4/22/14: Day 51: Worse than expected

Got a call from Hector last night saying that all the paperwork for the representative for the churches of Christ in El Salvador had expired. And there is no telling how long it will be until it is renewed. Hector suggested that we go on and try to turn everything that we have. So we left on time to go to San Salvador and we picked up Samuel on the way. Our first stop was a lawyer who was a sister in the church. Samuel and I had to make several trips across the street to make copies of various papers. As we were going through our papers we realized that my police record translation was absent. We have had a lot of trouble with the translator. Lucky tried to call the translator but no answer… So we left all of our papers with the lawyer and went to the office of the translator. She was of course not there and they said she was not going to be there today. I guess she is taking and extended extended government holiday. We then ate lunch at the mall and killed an hour because Samuel said everyone was on lunch break. Hector called and told us to meet him at the police station to get the records for here. On our way over he called again telling us more bad news. He said that the police station had already closed because there more than 800 people in line. He said we needed to be there at 5:00 AM to get a good spot in line and then after you get through all of that you have to come back again in 5 business days to wait through the line a second time to pick it up. Disheartened, we turned around and went to the mall where we believed the visa extension office was for Lucky. This mall had a complicated parking garage and we went the wrong way a few times. When we got to the information desk the officer told us it was at a different mall. When we got to the third mall we found the passport office and 300 or so people in line. We asked if this was the right place and they told us no, the extension office was in a different mall. We decided to go back home because it was getting late in the day and we were apparently going to have to make more trips to San Salvador soon. When we got home we checked all the expirations for our papers and decided that the chances of completing our application before the deadline are about zero. We called Hector and he said that we need to go back to San Salvador leaving the house at 3:00 AM on Thursday to make the request for our El Salvador police records, then we need to get the papers back from the lawyer and just submit to the immigration office what we have. The entire process of getting the visas has been super frustrating. At this point we are considering all our options.

Samuel spent the night with us. Bryan came over too so the three of us played Power Grid. Samuel and Bryan said they loved it.

Samuel is a true servant, he said that it was no problem for him to go with us at 3:00 AM on Thursday to help us try to get all this done.

Please keep this in your prayers.