Big News

Most of you probably already know by now, but for those of you who haven't heard, Olivia and I are engaged. What many of you probably don't know is that we have decided to move back to Utah early. We had already planned to come back to visit for Christmas, but now we are planning to stay afterwards. This will give Olivia more time to learn English, give me an opportunity to earn and save some money before I start my masters program, and it will give us more time to plan the wedding. This was kind of a sudden decision but the more we think about it the more we see that it will be a good thing. So now we're in the process of appealing for Olivia's fiancee visa. I have several questions concerning the visa application, so if anyone has any experience with this sort of thing, or knows someone I could call for free legal advice I would appreciate it.

I'm finishing up my third week here at the seminary and so far it has been great. I'm sad that I won't be able to finish out the year here, but I have other things to look forward to. It's a very small school, with only 25-30 students attending classes on-site, so there is a very intimate atmosphere between both students and faculty. For lunch and dinner most students cook a big meal together, which is usually accompanied by a lot of singing and laughter. The classes have all been great as well. The first two weeks were consecrated to learning Hebrew, and this last week was the first real week of classes. It turns out that I will be learning Greek at the same time as Hebrew, which actually isn't as intimidating as I thought it would be. On top of that I'm taking New Testament, Old Testament, church history, ethics, and apologetics.

On a final note, I find the French bureaucratic system thoroughly disagreable (to put it euphamistically!). Let me explain. When I went to San Francisco in May to get my student visa I was told by the French consulat that I was going to have to leave France and then re-enter in order to get my visa stamped, in order to get my residency card. This was because I came to France in July and the starting date for my visa was September 10. At first I thought that it was going to be simple: all I have to do is take a train to Italy and get my visa stamped at the train station, right? Wrong. I called everywhere I could think of, the American embassay, the French customs agency, the French border police, the train station, the airport, the French prefecture, to find out where I could go to get my visa stamped. Nobody knew and everyone sent me somewhere else, often to somebody I had already talked to. Eventually I was told that there was a customs agency in a train station in Vintimille, a small coastal city not far from the French/Italian border. So last Friday Olivia and I took a train to Vintimille to get my visa stamped and to spend an afternoon in the market and on the beach. Upon arrival we were informed that they no longer stamp visas at the train station and that I would have to take a plane somewhere, which was exactly what I was trying to avoid. Since I am only permitted 90 days here on my passport I had until October 6 (today) to get my visa stamped and validated. I spent most of Saturday scrambling to figure out what I was going to do next. It ended up that on Monday morning I took a train from Marseille to Geneva, then a plane from Geneva to Paris, and finally a train from Paris back to Marseille. Unfortunately when I got to Paris they told me that they couldn't stamp my visa, even though when I called and asked them the day before they said that they could. On Wednesday I went to the prefecture, which I should have done in the first place, and explained the whole situation. They told me that they didn't know why the consulat in San Francisco said I had to leave the country, that they didn't care about getting my visa stamped, and that all I had to do was fill out the paperwork for the residency card, which I don't even need now that we're coming back to Utah early. Argh! As Mike Howard would say, "What an opportunity to praise Jesus!"