December 21, 2007 & January 1-2, 2008

Brad has been trying to reach the Honduran Consulate in Chicago for two weeks but he can’t get anyone to answer the phone. He even sent an email to anybody he thought might have a different phone number for them. Nobody had a different number. He decided to call them today just so he could say he has called every work day for two weeks – even though it’s the Friday before the holidays. Amazingly they answered the phone. We have to go there to apply for a resident visa but we’ve been told if you don’t have an appointment they may not be there. They told Brad we would have to come in January because we were moving in January. They told us to come on January 2nd. He double checked with them to make sure they would be open on January 2nd and we could get this done on that day. We also had to stop by the Secretary of State’s office in Indy so they could verify the people who notarized all of our documents were official notaries. (i.e. they had to verify the notary was really a notary - that was a new one for us. Apparently this is a common occurrence because the each state’s Secretary of State has a person specifically designated to perform this function)

So New Years day we drive to Indy and spend the night so we can be at the Secretary of States office when they open Wednesday morning. Wednesday morning we show up when they open and within ten minutes they have all of our documents authenticated and are on the road to Chicago. Are biggest concern now is that the Honduran Consulate will be closed. We drive through Chicago, pay large quantities of money of drive on their toll roads, and finally arrive at the Honduran Consulate. Much to our surprise it’s open.
We go inside and wait our turn. They call us up to the window. We explain what we are trying to do the gentleman behind the window says “You can’t do this today. It is not a one day process. The lawyer is not here today. Maybe we could do it tomorrow." Maybe Tomorrow?????? Brad tries to explain that we just drove six hours to get here based on what they had told us two ago. They could have cared less. He did offer to let us fill out an application. We filled out the application and then he brought out a list of all the documents we needed to apply for the visa. As he listed each document we were able to show him we had it (or at least something close to it that we did our best to convince him it was the document he was asking about). The then made a phone call. Came back and told us they could FedEx our documents to us. It would cost $240 each plus $20 more to cover the cost of the shipping. So, we gave him all of our original documents and $520 in cash. He proceeded to take all the documents, our application, and our $520 in cash and staple them all together. Then we left with the man’s word that they might be able to get it shipped out this week.

Yep, that’s right we left. What else were we going to do? As we were driving away for the SIX hour drive home we agreed we both felt pretty good about the status of our resident visas. We were leaving without any of our documents we had worked so hard to collect. We were out $520 cash. And we had no visas. We had no receipt or paperwork to even prove we had been there. Seemed like a pretty successful trip to us. We called the head of General Baptists International missions to tell him what had just happened and his response was “Welcome to missions.”

Since our return from Chicago we have spoken with two of the other families we will be working with in Honduras and neither of them had to see a “lawyer” or leave their original documents. Go figure!