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Many of you have been praying for my papers and we want to thank each of you for your continued prayers. Last Monday, we went to Madrid for another appointment concerning my paperwork. We had hopes that this meeting would move us forward in the direction that we needed to go. When we arrived at the building where our meeting was, things seemed to go a little smoother than normal.
 They knew why we were there, and that was a good sign considering the meetings in the past that we had, the people had no idea what to tell us. A few minutes after looking at our documents, she noticed that we had entered the country back in September. This is important because any immigrant coming into the country has 30 days to process their paperwork. For us, it was obvious that we had exceeded our 30 day time limit. Of course, her first reaction was, "you have exceeded your time limit so we can't process your papers." We were very conscious of this and knew this issue would be addressed. In our previous attempts to process our papers, we were very aware that we had one month to do so. We continually stressed to each office, that we only had one month to get this done. During one of our meetings, one of the offices gave us an officially stamped document that basically said we were exempt from the one month time limit because we were "working" on our papers. As soon as she brought the issue before us, we showed her the official document. She looked it over and simply shook her head no. She basically told us that she was not going to accept this document. She went on to say that the law was the law and we had one month to process our papers and we did not do it. We continued to explain that we were very conscious of the time limit and we did everything in our power to get things processed but no one really knew how to help us. That is why one of the offices issued us this document making us exempt from the time limit. Unfortunately, she would hear nothing of it. She continued to shake her head no and proceeded to say, "I cannot accept this and can't process your papers any further." To say the least, we were shocked. This was the last thing we thought would happen. She went on to say we basically had 2 options:
- 1. We could get a lawyer and fight this is we felt we had been treated unfairly
or
- 2. Return to the States and start the process all over.
At that moment, we knew we were heading back to the States. She began to "de-process" all of our papers so that it would show our paperwork had been denied. We began to ask her what we could have done differently so we could avoid this same thing next time. We explained to her that we had done everything correctly and we had done exactly what we were told by each office. There was nothing we could have done differently. As she continued to "de-process" our papers, something happened that we can only explain as "Divine Intervention." She got up from her desk and was gone for a few moments. Deanna and I began discussing plans for starting over and all that needed to be done. When she came back, she told us that her boss was not in the office but that if we would come back in the morning, she would talk to him to see if he would say anything different. She assured us that she did not believe he would say anything different, but at least it gave us a glimmer of hope. We left and began the long journey back to our hotel. We were unsure of what was going to happen next, but from the information she had given us, we were pretty confident we would have to go back and start all over. We made some phone calls asking people to really pray that the Lord would work in this situation. We were praying for a miracle. Just a few hours later, the Lord performed a miracle. The lady called us on our cell phone and said she had talked to her boss and that if we could bring 2 more documents the following day, they would possibly process our papers. We were ecstatic. We could not believe it. One minute, she was putting a stamp of denial on our papers, and the next, she was calling us to let us know we could possibly get my papers processed. Only the Lord could do this. The next day, we went back to the office and met with the same lady. This time she was all smiles. We presented the other documents she requested and in less than 10 minutes, she had processed my papers and we were out the door. It was truly amazing. Again, all we could say was, "only the Lord could do this." There is no other explanation for it. We praise the Lord for His leading. We thank each of you who have been praying for our situation. Please continue to pray. Deanna and Aaron still don't have their visas. We are praying that their papers would be pushed through now that mine have been processed. Regardless of what happens down the road, God has performed a miracle in this situation. Please continue to pray. We thank the Lord for each and everyone of you. The Andrews Family |
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