Line Hopping

Okay, I know that you guys like pictures and believe me I have pictures
but today will be a post with no pictures. It's either that or no post.

My new Mac computer is not working as it should so I can only open the window drive side (did that even make sense to you computer wizards?) I cannot load any pictures onto the window portion although I can use the internet from there but I cannot use the internet from the Mac side in order to access my blog. I had been using Warren's computer for posting but he's using it to study for tonight's message because the study helps are loaded on that computer. So, a post with no pictures. Come back later, though, and I will have great pictures of our anniversary celebration!!!!


Hopefully, you'll want to hear bad enough to bear with it just this once!

We have had a week of standing in line. Literally.

Side note: when we were in the airport on our way to Brazil we started talking with a young Brazilian couple. He spoke very good English. He told us how difficult our language was to learn because of the prepositions. He asked "so how can you stand on the line in some cases and in the line on others? Why do you get in the car but on the plane?"

Anyway, we were in line. For hours. For 3 days straight.

We had heard that Brazil is this way. Waiting in a line a lot. We had commented to each other just the day before that we hadn't really experienced that. Paying bills had been fairly easy. The grocery store no worse than at home, etc.

And then we decided we needed to apply for our CPF.

The CPF is a number that you need in Brazil in order to do any business. We even need it to rent an apartment. It keeps track of all of our business transactions in Brazil. You can liken it to our social security numbers. We had tried to do some research on the internet to know how to go about getting it and we did get the help of our Brazilian Portuguese teacher.

We are so thankful for her.

We truly couldn't have gotten this far without her. Or without Tim and TaLisa's car. Can you imagine doing this using the bus? Oh, I don't even want to think of that.....

So Wed. we started out with big plans that by the end of the day we would be holding our new CPF numbers in hand ready to seek God on the next step.

Well, we actually started on Tues. afternoon by going to the local post office asking for the form to fill out. At this point we were thinking we would take the form home, fill it out, return it and wait for the numbers to come in the mail. That's what we thought. We were told there that if we went to the large post office down town it would be processed faster so we decided to do that. That was God looking out for us because we found out the next day that the form we needed couldn't even be gotten at the post office so had we filled out the regular form that the small post office would have given us (for people with permanent visas or residents of Brazil) we would have waited a month only to find out it wasn't the right form for us.

So Wed., thinking we knew what we were doing, the three of us headed out to seek our coveted cards! Yes - you have figured it out. We couldn't get them at the post office, nor at the Police Federal, nor at the next place, nor the next....(now in this process there were a couple of times we had to quit for the day because we would find the next place closed and have to wait for morning). Each day we started out thinking we were on the right track only to be disappointed.

There is renewed hope though! On Fri. we did find the right place (we think!) as she promised that once we get our passport translated into Portuguese she would issue us our CPF numbers. So off we went to find a place to have the translation done. (it must be done by a certified person) That took 3 tries right there! But it was accomplished and they are suppose to be ready for us on Monday to take to the place we believe will finish the process.

Ohhhhh, I hope so.

We have now been to 10 locations in this process and as of now still do not hold in our hands the CPF cards. They tell us getting these is easy. Wait until we try for our new visas.

Now this is what I heard about Brazil!

Who would have thought that standing in line would
have been our big job for the week.