May 9, 2016

Reunited and it feels so good, reunited because they understood.  Well, that is not exactly what the song says but almost.  It is hard to believe we have been here now for 15 months and it is time already for our visa renewals.  On the other hand, it is hard to believe how much has happened and how much the work here has grown in such a relatively short time.  This morning we headed out for San Salvador at 7:30.  My one year visa runs out June 10^th and we were told to re-apply one month before that date.  Tomorrow is Mother's Day here since it is always May 10^th no matter what day of the week that is.  Anyway, everything closes here for Mother's Day- schools and government.  I had called a couple of weeks ago and was told immigration would be open today.  Then Friday when Charlotte was on a study with Seyli and she said she thought the government would be closed today also.  We tried to call to recheck but it was too late in the day so we just decided to go on and hope for the best because we already had a 9:30 appointment with the lawyer we used last year to get our visas.  We had a smooth trip and even arrived in time to walk around the corner to a small restaurant for drinks before our appointment.  We still needed a couple of documents from the man who is the president of the Churches here in El Salvador so like last year we had to go over to his house and back during the process.  We finally finished up at the lawyer's office at almost noon.  They charged $125 but they really know their business about immigration so I'm sure it was worth it.  We do have one document, our letter of support from Huntsville that she said they may not accept because it does not have the State of Alabama seal with it but she said we should try anyway.  We had lunch at McDonald's since it was noon and arrived at immigration at 1:00.  It was really uncrowded so we got to have an interview right away.  The lady who helped us had to go ask someone else if we could apply together since Charlotte's visa is over a month later than mine but she came back and said ok.  She took all our documents and set an appointment for 9:00 on this Thursday morning for us to come back to see if everything is approved.  That will be two trips to San Salvador in one week but at least we will know in a hurry if we are approved for another year or if there is something more we have to do.  We can get the documents brought by Clifton if we have to but that will mean a trip to Montgomery by him and we hope he does not have to do that.  Keep us in your prayers that all will be approved as is.  We went by Walmart after immigration since we were close by and don't go much these days.  We really just got some food items and a few more pyrex dishes for Charlotte to cook with.  We also stopped at Selectos in Sonsonate since Walmart did not have any powdered sugar. We finally made it home about 5 and had Cesar over for dinner at 6:30 since Eliza went back to San Salvador with her dad to be with her mother for tomorrow.