Permanent Visas

Last week we took yet another trip to the federal police and gave then our fingerprints for the third time. It has taken reams of paperwork, numerous trips to the American consulate, Brazilian federal police and the agency that makes official copies, hundreds of dollars a person and 32 months in country. For the first two times we turned in paperwork, the file for our family, at more than an inch, was thicker than my masters thesis. It included copies of all the pages in our passports, school records, statements saying we will not enter Indian territories, financial statements, letters verifying our children are ours, police records (including for all our children) and so on... After the umpteenth time to the American consulate for extra paperwork, the consular said they were harassing us and refused to produce yet another document and said if they insist, to have them call her.

But in the end there was success. We were granted our permanent visas for Brazil. A big Thank-you to those of you who have been praying for our visas for the last five years.

That is all except for Caleb, our thirteen year old, whose process for a visa is being followed up on by a lawyer.

Now we will need to obtain Brazilian drivers licenses. So far we have been driving on translations of our American ones, since we are unable to get one here till we had a permanent visa. Pray for this process. We are searching for an option other than the one we were told by the license agency here – it involves going back to square one in the driving process, beginning with driving school at hundreds of dollars.

You know you are a MK when......

You know you're an MK when....

My kids and some friends kids recently spent soem time lauging over the items in a book called You know you are an MK When.... by Andy and Deborah Kerr. Here are a few of the list with their comments, a few modifications for Brazil and a few new "whens" they said.

• You speak two languages and can't spell in either one. (that's Lydia)

• Your life story uses the phrase, “Then we went to...” multiple times

• You watch a movie and you know what the nationals are really saying. ( Would you believe they were speaking Portuguese on an episode of Gilligans Isle?)

• You watch the latest movies in the theater with subtitles – and miss them if they are not there! (for some reason my family has taken to watching DVDs at home with the subtitles on – even when both are in English!)

• You want to go barefoot , automatically take off your shoes when you get home... and only put them on when forced to because you are headed to a store or church. (that's all of us I think!)

• You wake up one day and realize this is home and you are not a foreigner any more, but another day you wake up and realize this isn't home and you really still are.

• You yearn for fruits unknown to those in the states.

• You dream in a foreign language. ( Jacob had one recently,ask him about ordering at McDonalds in Portuguese)

• You know they don't speak Spanish in Brazil.

• Getting a mail pack with magazines is the highlight of your day. (and the children would like it to mean you get the day off to read!)

• You carry Bibles in two languages to church.

• Home is where you hang your hammock....and you would rater sleep in one than a bed. (some of my family has developed a love for sleeping in hammocks...so why did we ever by beds?)

• You think it normal to have had lice, parasites, and strange tropical diseases.

• None of your neighbors can pronounce the name of your cat – or understand what it means. (We have a black cat and the kids wanted to name it licorice, well that is an unknown thing here and doesn't translate. To many people thought we named our cat liquor, which they also thought quite unbefitting a missionary. Our cat is now named Shadow.

• You wonder if people really do drive in straight lines.... instead of swerving to miss the potholes, busses, bicycles, people, horses, carts and occasional buffalo or cow in the road.

• You go two days without eating rice and beans ... and miss them.

• You don't know your shoe size or clothing size when asked by grandparents.

• You don't know how to make Hungry Jack pancakes and wish you could just make them from scratch. (My kids wanted to know who was Hungry Jack... and why wouldn't you just make them from scratch).

• You can easily fall asleep while traveling on a rutted dirt road.

• You get lost at Wal-Mart. (this prompted a discussion of what is Wal-Mart really like?)

• Your American friends have strange eating habits, but you want them to bring you American food when they visit.

• Before you were ten you had a police report run on you (they even had to invent a process to do so just for you!), been fingerprinted more times than a criminal and spent hours at the federal police.

• You know exactly how to pack a suitcase to 70 pounds and which airlines still give that baggage limit instead of 50 pounds.

• A 40 hour plane ride and four airports seem normal to get to where you used to call home.

• You tell people you are from a city of over a million at the mouth Amazon River and they assume you live in a grass hut.

• The phrase “act your age and not your shoe size “ doesn't mean what you think. (a favorite of a teacher here is “act your shoe size and not your age!”)

• The concept of dying for your faith is easier to grasp than being ridiculed for your clothes. (They had no idea why anyone would be ridiculed for their clothes.)

• Your host in the states catches you admiring the way salt flows freely from the shaker. (Josiah wanted to know if this was so - here it lumps and is always damp)

• You are defined by your parents profession. (They cheered and said we like being MK's).

• Weather forecasting means looking to the east... and if you see an approaching wall of rain you know you have less then three minutes to get all the laundry down.

• Heaven is the only place you can really call home.