The Obsessed Programmer

This entry is not meant to be an update on the status of Project Puma in general.  The short story is, we raised almost $18,000 (well past our goal) and had a successful trip to Peru, in which we began the construction of the new Puma family home.  For more details, see www.ProjectPuma.org as soon as I have time to update it

Rather, this entry is intended as a sad personal narrative on how I wound up back in the United States, with the woman I love still in Peru.

Almost two months ago, Liliana and I made the final decision to go to Peru with several of our friends to visit her family and help them begin to rebuild their home that was destroyed in the recent 8.0 earthquake.  Liliana is not a U.S. citizen, but has been working legally in Park City as a permanent resident on a J-1 visa, as an intern at the Marriott Mountainside Hotel Resort.  First on our list of things to take care of before the trip was getting her papers in order to be sure she could return to the United States after our visit.

We called her internship sponsor company here in the United States to make sure everything was in order.  They gave her a list of documents that she would need to have on hand in order to return to the U.S. after her trip.  They also urged her to make sure her J-1 visa was current and was marked “M” under “entries,” meaning she could enter the U.S. multiple times on the same visa.  Liliana assured me that her visa was up to date and that it was marked M, and we got together all of her other paperwork as requested.

About a week before the trip, I was finally able to relax.  We had successfully raised all the money we needed, we had enough people going to make the trip worthwhile, we had all the hotel and travel reservations in order, and we both had permission to take off work for the week involved.

That day, the day I was finally able to relax, Liliana walked into my office and informed me that her visa was in fact expired.

It’s a tribute to my mother’s gentle teachings that I didn’t wring Liliana’s neck then and there.

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Okay, I had to take a few moments there to calm down, just remembering it.

So I got back into high-stress mode and got to work to get her visa renewed (or at least a promise of getting it renewed) before we left to Peru.  I even got an executive at Marriott (a real executive–the first Google results for his name are famous quotes from him) to promise to call and write the embassy asking for them to renew her visa.

But as it turns out, you have to return to the embassy in your country of origin to get a visa renewed.  So we decided she had better go, and hope for the best.

We arrived in Lima late on the night of Saturday, November 3rd.  On Monday, we started the process of getting her visa renewed.  That means going to a bank and paying $115 for an appointment the following day to call the embassy and ask for an appointment to get a visa renewed.  So we called the embassy on Tuesday and got an appointment for Thursday.  The person on the phone gave us a list of about 6 different documents to bring with us to ensure Liliana’s visa could be renewed.

On Thursday, at 8:00AM, we went to the U.S. embassy to have finally her visa renewed.  The person working with her asked her for this form, that form, and the other form.  They then asked for the DS-7002.

Liliana had never heard of the DS-7002.  Her company in the U.S. had never mentioned it.  The person on the phone on Tuesday had never mentioned it.  She didn’t have it.

They said they would most likely approve her visa, but that she needed to contact her U.S. sponsor company to get a DS-7002.  They kept all her papers and sent her away with a blue form stating that she should send the DS-7002 with her passport via DHL to the U.S. embassy for processing, and that they would mail her back her passport and renewed visa to any DHL in Peru.

Frustrated (this will become the word of the day), we left the embassy to find a place to make an international call to her U.S. sponsor.  Her U.S. sponsor told her that they could not actually make a DS-7002 for her, but that she needed to contact their counterpart in Peru.  We got an address and phone number for the Peruvian office.

Their Peruvian office was actually quite close, so we took a taxi to speak with them directly.  The person there was very nice, and informed Liliana that the DS-7002 is actually not a new form at all, but the new name for her internship employment contract (as of about 6 months ago).

Here comes the really sad part of the story: She had actually had those papers with her in the embassy, in her hand.  The person in the embassy simply asked for them by a different name than the person who gave us the list of paperwork on the phone on Tuesday.

Frustrated, we took a taxi to the DHL office to mail the papers, which she’d already had in the embassy, to the embassy.  The people at DHL assured us that the embassy picks up such packages daily and typically finishes processing all of them the next day.

We had to have the papers from the embassy by the end of Friday in order to make our 1AM Monday flight with her visa, since the embassy (nor any DHL office) is open Saturday or Sunday.  The person at DHL said that the best way to get that done was to call the DHL office that’s actually in the embassy and have them hold her package in the embassy after it was processed.  That way we could physically go to the embassy on Friday to pick up the package rather than waiting until Monday (actually Tuesday, as Monday was a U.S. holiday) to have them ship it to another DHL office in Peru.

We tried to call the embassy to let them know to hold the package there at the DHL office in the embassy, only to be told that you can only call the embassy between 3 and 4 PM.

Frustrated, we went personally to the embassy and had one of the guards in front call the DHL on their walky-talky, and we got them to agree to hold Liliana’s package at the embassy when it arrives.

Friday, we called the embassy in the morning to find out if they’d received her visa yet.  We were reminded to call between 3 and 4 PM.

Frustrated, we went personally to the embassy and had one of the guards in front call the DHL on their walky-talky, and we found out they had not received her package yet.

We also found out that the embassy was closing early, 3 PM, on Friday.  That’s right, 3 PM, before the allowed calling times.

We were therefore sentenced to spend the rest of Friday afternoon, until 6 PM (when the DHL in the embassy closes) standing in front of the embassy (you’re not allowed to sit, due to security concerns) and asking the guard hourly to call DHL to see if they’d received her package.  At this point, I was starting to wonder who I could kill to get inside.  Unfortunately, all those people were armed with automatic weapons.

At 6 PM, our last chance, they had still not received her package.

So we called Delta to reschedule Liliana’s flight.  It cost $200 to move her flight from 1 AM Monday to 1 AM Thursday.

Frustrated, but with nothing further to do, we returned to her family’s home in Chincha to enjoy Saturday and Sunday with them, having completely wasted Thursday and Friday trying to expedite her visa.  Which she would have received, had the two government officials given her the same name for the paper which she had brought with her to the embassy.

But I’m not to the upsetting part yet.

Saturday night, we said goodbye to Liliana’s family and headed to the airport for me to fly back, alone.  We got to the airport, checked my bag, and headed to the security checkpoint to say goodbye (not even knowing if it was a permanent goodbye or not), and partway up, Liliana’s heart stopped.

She had left her paperwork she needed to get her passport from DHL and leave the country in my bag I had just checked.

At this point, Liliana started to cry.  I tried to assure her that I could get those papers back to her overnight from the United States.  And I said goodbye.

In my layover in Atlanta, I called FedEx, UPS, and DHL.  None of them could ship overnight from Salt Lake City to Lima.  The best they could guarantee was the end of the business day on Wednesday.  That is, the package would arrive just a few hours after the last chance Liliana would have to get her passport back from the embassy in order to make her 1 AM Thursday flight.

I arrived in Salt Lake City around 12:30 PM.  I knew I had to make it to a FedEx store by about 3:00 PM in order to get out an express international shipment that day.  I hurried off their airplane and down to baggage claim, where everyone waited dumbfounded for over 30 minutes while we watched an empty baggage claim carousel.

When I finally got hold of my bag, I had a few problems.  One, I had no idea where to find a FedEx store in Salt Lake City.  Two, I had no idea where in the 50,000-car economy parking lot I had parked when I came to the airport the week before.

At this point, I had a bit of luck, believe it or not.  I ran into another member of the Park City Stake of our church, right there in the airport waiting at the same baggage carousel.  He agreed to drive me around parking until I found my car.

So, about 1:30, I set out to find a FedEx location.  I did in fact find one, and got the package shipped, paying about $60.

If you’re interested, you can track the package at www.FedEx.com with tracking number 850965062740.

Late this morning, I got a call from Liliana.  The DHL in the embassy still had not received her package from the embassy.  Although we had a bit of luck–as it turns out, she found that she still had the receipt to get her package from DHL with her in Peru, so as long as my package gets there at some time on Wednesday, she will be okay.  As long as the embassy gets her paperwork out by tomorrow evening.

Please, pray for Liliana.  Fast, if you’d like to.  Have your friends and temples pray as well.  She’s falling apart over there.  She really can’t afford what it will cost to have her flight moved again.  And if she ends up being forced to stay in Peru, I don’t know what she’ll do.  Or what I’ll do.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 at 8:28 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.