Our Trip to Lima

Thanks so much to those who prayed for our recent trip to Lima to apply for our religious visas!  All things considered the trip went pretty smoothly.  I wouldn't want to do it again any time soon (though we might have to...), but as far as I can tell we accomplished what we set out to.

Here we are waiting at Interpol to get finger printed, questioned about body markings, and have our teeth examined.  They're pretty serious about knowing who is in their country!

 

One kind of nice thing about Peru is how they always offer "preferencia" to anyone who is old, pregnant, or with a small child.  Thanks to this policy I got to skip ahead in several lines provided that I had Finn with me.  Since we finished earlier than Derek we headed down the street to the 2nd largest mall in South America.  I enjoyed shopping for a few things that we haven't been able to find in Arequipa (crock pot, waffle iron, allspice, and garlic salt), and Finn enjoyed playing at this play place.

I learned that there's no point in paying for tickets or whatever to make the arcades and rides actually go.  As long as they're already lighting up and making noise he doesn't know the difference!

So hopefully in a few weeks we'll get word that our applications were approved and that we can pick them up and begin the process of getting one for Finn.  They won't let you apply for a visa for your child until you already have one yourself.  So there may be more trips to Lima in the near future, but hopefully there will be fewer lines and offices to visit since Finn is a minor (I can't imagine they'd want to finger print him too!)

- Laura