Visa Challenges!

My 90 day tourist visa ends on Friday. We've been scrambling this week to get that solved. Yesterday afternoon I left school early to go to the SEF office (Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteirae) in Cascais. We waited for a little while before speaking to 3 different people to get information before leaving. Basically I need to apply for an extension on my tourist visa - another 90 days. After that, the next step is to re-apply for a long term visa since my first attempt in the states was rejected. To get the extended tourist visa I needed to make a trip to Lisbon to have a criminal background check.

This morning when I arrived at school I was warned that the trip to Lisbon might be today and I should be prepared to leave my class (and make sure they had work to do)! Sure enough, about 10am the pastor came in and asked if we could leave in the next 20min to head into Lisbon to get my criminal background checked. I wrote a list of work on the board and explained why I was leaving. I said I should be back sometime before the end of the day. I had to chuckle when one of my Greek students leaned to her neighbor to clarify why I was going to have my criminal record checked! Some of them were afraid that I wouldn't be back!

After waiting in line about two and a half hours our number flashed up! They were helping #80 when we arrived and our number was #139. I did a lot of "people watching" during that time. Even thought I don't understand Portuguese you can still pick up a lot of things from people's body language and facial expressions. Once we were helped, it only took about 2 minutes to get the needed documents and be back on our way. It's funny how a change from the normal classroom environment can drain me more than a typical day at school.

The pieces seem to be falling into place. Wed. and Thurs. I have two more appointments to finish getting the missing pieces. I'm so thankful for the help from the school in getting me where I need to go and speaking for me at each of of these places. You can pray that all goes well and by Friday I'll have an extended tourist visa that will get me through to early next year. I've had to be patient the past few days and am sure I'll be tested some more. But in the midst of all this I know (and have already seen) that God is going to work this out. I'd appreciate your prayers though! That's all for now - I'll have an update in a few days...