the brasil story: page 11

-Sitting, wishing, wanting, waiting…
I had done all I could do. It was in God’s hands now. But jeeze, did I want God to hook up the Dubster with a blessing right about now. I applied for my visa November 15th. The consulate told me this was only their second application for this special “correspondence” visa, and they weren’t sure how long it would take to get approved. They had to send all the documents to Brasil for processing. They said I should expect to wait about ten days for an answer.

Those next ten days were the slowest of my life. Then…on the tenth day…no one called. Day eleven…no one called. Same thing on day number twelve. Then I told myself, maybe they meant ten “business” days. As the days rolled by, one by one, I began to wonder if this was all a foolish dream. Who was looking at my application? What exactly was the criteria the consulate used to grant this type of visa? Were they going to say no? Ten “business” days had now passed, and still nothing. Everytime my phone rang with an L.A. area code (323, 310, 213), I immediately answered it, hoping it would be the consulate–but it was always my record company colleagues, and I’d let out a big depressed “sigh” when I found out it was someone other than the consulate on the line. Big shout out here to Todd and Akiko, the great people at MyBrazilVisa.com, who checked up on my application after I returned to Arizona–they work in the same building as the consulate, so they can take care of business!

Then, one day at work, when I was in the thick of a hectic day, I missed a call from a 323 area code. I checked my voice mail, and it was the consulate–I had been approved. My stomach felt like I had just gotten on a roller-coaster, my mind was racing a million miles a minute, and I nearly cried. This was it. I was going to Brasil.

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