David's Residency Card Adventure (Blessing)

David's adventure applying for his residence card yesterday:

4:15 a.m. - Get up, take a shower, and eat breakfast

4:45 - I leave for the police station in Alcala.

5:00 - I arrive at the police station. About 30 people are standing around outside the station. I look around for the nicest looking group and try to speak to them in very broken Spanish. Thankfully, after I said something like "Mirror the residency card." instead of "Are you waiting for your residence card?" a girl replied with, "English?" The girl was a student from Mexico who spoke perfect English. I asked how many people were in line ahead of her. She replied, "Everyone here." I knew this couldn't be the case because I went through the process with another teacher two weeks ago, so I sort of knew how things were supposed to work.

6:00 - Long story short, no one who was waiting around had any idea how the system worked. After much discussion, the girl's Mexican friend went inside to ask. It turns out that we needed to form four different lines, depending on what we had come to do and what country we were from. Those of us who wanted to establish residency and who were not from the EU had to form one line. Ten tickets would be given out at 8:00 that would allow the first ten people to apply for residency that day. There were four of us in this line, I was number four. Two others arrived over the next hour.

7:00 - Five more people arrive. Two of them get in the back of our line, and three of them decide that they will be first in line. This does not go over very well with those who have been waiting since 4:00 in the morning, and I thought there might be a fight. Everyone remains calm, however, and we continue to wait. At this point I make a mental decision that I will not get upset, no matter what the outcome. God is in control of this situation, and from an eternal viewpoint, it will not matter if I am three people farther back in line. I also determine to leave my application for residency in God's hands as well.

It should be said that two weeks ago I came to the police station at 5:00 a.m., just like today, with another teacher from the school. She needed a ride to the station, and I stayed with her so she wouldn't be there alone. After waiting all morning, she was told that she had been given the wrong visa. She then had to go into downtown Madrid to try to resolve the problem. That didn't work, and it took a flight to Malaga in southern Spain, followed by another trip into Madrid before everything was right.

8:00 - A police officer comes outside for a smoke break. The Mexican students in front of me explain the issue with the three line-breakers. The three line breaking ladies also make animated comments. I can't really understand any of it, but the police officer finally throws up his hands and refuses to talk about it. He goes back inside.

8:45 - The same police officer comes back outside to hand out tickets. He walks past the first three in line and begins handing out tickets to the rightful first person in line. The first three ladies are most upset, but he refuses to even speak to them. He passes out tickets to everyone in line, and the three line-breakers do not get tickets.

8:50 - I call Silvia, the lawyer who will come help me through the process. I have a slightly elevated heart rate when I can not get ahold of her after the first three attempts, but I finally contact her.

9:10 - Silvia arrives and we wait. We talk about religion in Spain, Morrocans in Spain, Romanians in Spain, her family in Peru, etc. Interestingly, the three ladies who tried to break in front of the line have come into the waiting area, even though they don't have tickets.

10:30 - It is finally my turn. We sit at a desk and the government lady looks through all of my paperwork. She asks to see my passport, and when she looks at my visa she says, "This is the wrong visa!" (In Spanish, of course.) This is where I am glad I have a Spanish speaking lawyer because she says, "No, it is the correct visa. I have already checked it out. Look at the codes at the bottom. Those are the correct codes for a missionary." The lady pulls out a thick manual, looks up the codes, and says, "You're right."

All of my paperwork is in order. Everything is in the computer correctly (a tribute to the Spanish consulate in New Orleans, Silvia says, because things are not always entered correctly), and to top it off, there is a computer glitch which means I only have to pay 10 euros instead of the usual 20.

10:50 - To pay the fees for my residence card, we have to walk to the nearest bank. This is how many fees are paid here. For example, fees at the university are also paid directly to a bank. So we walk to the nearest branch of Caja Madrid.

11:00 - We arrive at the bank and wait in another line.

11:20 - We head back to the police station.

11:30 - The government lady, whose name is Anna, tells us to wait in the waiting area as she has to help other people first before she can get back to us. She takes paperwork from a couple of other people. When she finishes with the tenth person from our line, one of the line-breaking ladies from this morning goes to her desk and tries to talk to her. Police officers make her return to the waiting area.

11:45 - Anna gets up from her desk and leaves.

12:15 - Her break is over and she returns. She helps a couple of other people.

12:30 - She calls us over. We show proof that we paid the fee. She takes my fingerprints and staples pictures of me to the various documents.

12:40 - We're done. I can come back in 45 days to pick up my residence card. As we are leaving, Anna is getting up from her desk to leave again. Meanwhile, the break-in-the-line lady is yelling to her from the waiting area. I actually feel quite sorry for the line-breaking lady because she is crying, genuinely upset, and obviously needs to get her paperwork done that day. It doesn't look like that will be happening, though, and she has now been waiting since 7:00.

I give Silvia a ride to her office about 15 minutes away and head home.

1:15 - I arrive home.

Somewhere in the midst of all this, Silvia tells me that I am very "lucky." Today was the very best that it can possibly go. Not only were there no problems with any of the paperwork that I had to turn in, but I was able to get fingerprinted on the same day, and I only had to pay half price. The usual is that you have to make a seperate appointment to get fingerprinted, and then you wait for up to three hours when you come back to get that done. I sat at the police station for almost 8 hours yesterday, but it is done. Thank you, Lord, for your favor.

Tuesdays are our day off each week. :)