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.