I took a bunch of pictures of all of our documents. We are
still missing two pages of translations. After breakfast, Samuel and I walked
to the market to get some copies made. Then Della joined us and we left for
Santa Ana to find the immigration office. We searched and searched and had to
ask three people for help. We finally found it at 11:00. The immigration
officer told us that we were missing the Apostil on every document that had to
come from the El Salvadorian representative in the U.S. consulate. He also told
us that there were other problems with almost every form that we tried to
submit. After talking to him for about an hour he made a phone call and decided
we didn’t have to have the Apostil. It is crazy how many levels of
authentication that are needed. Each of our documents are notarized, certified,
and Apostil by the state. He also said that we had to get the missing
translations. We decided that we needed to go to San Salvador again today to
get them because we are so out of time. We grabbed some lunch and then drove to
San Salvador. We got to the translator’s office at 2:00 and waited until 3:30
for the student to arrive. He wasn’t so
nervous this time. We got our last two translations without any more trouble.
At this point, now that I had binders to organize them with Della’s help, I believe that we have all the translations. It has taken more than six return visits to get what they should have given us in the first place! I know that it is my fault for not properly checking that they were all there when I received them… But… It took more than an hour to organize the 100+ lose pages and I did not have any help at all when I received them. It would have been one thing if I could read Spanish, but I couldn’t…
At this point, now that I had binders to organize them with Della’s help, I believe that we have all the translations. It has taken more than six return visits to get what they should have given us in the first place! I know that it is my fault for not properly checking that they were all there when I received them… But… It took more than an hour to organize the 100+ lose pages and I did not have any help at all when I received them. It would have been one thing if I could read Spanish, but I couldn’t…
Samuel managed to arrange for us to meet with the church
representative in Ahuachapán at 9:00 tomorrow. Samuel decided to stay in San
Salvador so Della and I managed to navigate home on our own. We got home at
6:30, exhausted. Going to San Salvador takes about 2.5 hours to get there and
another 2.5 hours to get back. Together, Della and I have made three trips this
week and I made a trip last Saturday for the teens. It has truly been an
exhausting week.
Bryan came over at 7:00 to tell us that he had hurt his leg
pretty bad playing soccer. He was limping a lot. I told him that I was too
tired to hang out and he said that was O.K. because he was in too much pain.
Please pray for his recovery.
 |
| Cool Insect |
No comments:
Post a Comment