Jim

We all knew this time would come. And yes, it is here at last.

Some of you may remember our exciting visa adventures from the past. No – not the credit card – the documents that allow us to live in Mexico. Through great trials and tribulations (and thousands of dollars spent), we finally had our temporary resident visas.

If you were really paying attention, you might have known that you can only have those for so long – then you need to get out of the country, or apply for permanent resident visas.

Permanent resident visas are beautiful glittering documents that are – well – permanent. At least in the sense that you don’t have to get anything else after a certain time, and you don’t have to renew them for thousands of pesos every year or whenever. So we want those. So this is the year.

We’ve actually been working on the details for all this since last year, but this past week we really began in earnest with a trip to the MX/US border.

If you get permanent visas, you may not drive a vehicle with foreign plates. So to begin the process of getting Mexican license plates, we had to go to the border and do some dashing in and out (at different locations even), paying large sums of money, and doing a whole lotta paperwork. It took us three days at the border (plus a day to shop and some travel – almost a week in away), but we now have a Mexican vehicle (and a Mexican cargo trailer). Special thanks to Luis and Brock for their help.

But – hold on – no Mexican license plates yet. That’s a whole other issue.

So as we continue the month of January (boy, it’s going fast, isn’t it??) we’re going to attempt to get license plates, and get some more paperwork done for my visa (which expires before the visas of the rest of the family), which will likely mean lots of waiting in line, travel to another city, and there’s always money involved (and it’s never money we get – why is that?).

Seriously, though, we do appreciate your prayers. Our trip was good, God went before us, but we are exhausted (and came home to a pipe leaking water in the bathroom – I guess we’d better add that to the “to do list”…) and trying to make sure we get all the “urgent” stuff done. You don’t want to forget that one document and find that everything has expired and you missed a whole procedure.

But for now, visa issues aside, we’re preparing materials for kids’ Sunday school tomorrow (Shari is teaching), and I’m working on my sermon. I had a good talk with someone today who is thinking of checking out our Sunday service – as always, I’m sure it will be an interesting day!