Breathing, breathing...

I was going to title this "PANIC", but decided I really need to take a breath and pray and ask you do to do the same. Breath in - breath out.

I pulled out all of my dossier documents and started comparing the notary's name on the documents to the notary's name on the apostille sheet - you know, the one with the shiny gold star. FIFTEEN of them are wrong!!!  The notary's name is spelled wrong on FIFTEEN of them!!!  14 of them are the same notary - the one at the bank. An extra "s" was added to her name. Then on a different one, the notary's first name is wrong. Listed as "Terri" when it should be "Teresa". Oh my!!!!

I have an email into my most wonderful stateside paperwork helper, Nancy, to ask her if the documents are going to be ok. Do you think that for a country that demands signatures in blue ink, notary stamps not touching any words, no white-out, etc, and requires an extra document that says Pat and Patrick are the same person is going to think this is ok? Nope. I don't either.  And in order for these documents to be official, an ink stamp is applied to both the 3/4 sheet of the apostille and the document itself. So, I have a hunch that all of these documents will need to be redone too. Maybe I shouldn't speculate, but I need to think out my plan for tomorrow - which includes asking for prayer support! So, that's why I'm here typing at you.



These are my first set of documents. You can see the stamp in the upper right hand corner.

The good news is that all but one of these documents are the easy "print and sign" type. The bad news is that the other one is my state police clearance. It was notarized at the state level. But hey, the State Dept of Justice is in Madison too.  So, here's my plan if they all need to be redone. Call the Secretary of State office that does the apostilling to tell her I'm coming down today to get them redone and ask nicely that she do them while I wait. Call the State Dept of Justice and ask if I can get a new letter. If it's another $20, so be it. Hopefully it will be close to the SoState's office. Somehow figure out how to get Pat out of work to get those 14 documents resigned with a notary close to his work. Go down to Madison, drop off of the documents to get re-apostilled, get my state police letter, go get it apostilled, and come home with ALL of my documents. (Wouldn't it be fun if the Indiana envelope was in the mailbox when I got back?) This is all great as long as everyone is in the office and feeling cooperative. :-)

The most wonderful news is that none of this is a surprise to God. He knew I needed my calendar completely clear tomorrow. Please pray that IF I have to travel back down, that everyone will be cooperative, in the office, and we get done what we need to. Prayers for safe travels too! Patience for the kids would be a good idea too. THANK YOU!