It’s Saturday and Mother’s Day here. The street vendors were out all day yesterday preparing flowers and I saw lots of children dressed in traditional costumes on their way to school to dance for their parents. The lightning pictures in the slide show on the right are from one of the nightly thunderstorms this week.
Ana is working in her consultario today like she did yesterday. She apologized for working but said that she needs to support me while I’m here doing nothing. What a great sense of humor! I think. She also has plans to do more dental work on me this afternoon. All I have to do is show up. I may have to be busy later. I’ve decided to stop telling people that I only need one or two more trips to her office and the ring will be paid for.Back to the story…
In Mexico, pastors don’t have the authority to conduct legal weddings. A civil wedding is still required even if there is a church wedding. Many families also prefer, or require, a religious wedding. We are going to have both here. We could have married in the United States using a Fiancé visa. With this visa, I would apply to bring Ana into the country specifically for the wedding. Ana would be able to use the visa once, and we would have to marry within 90 days. After the wedding we would petition for her Permanent Residency (green card); a process which takes 6-8 weeks. It’s not a bad option but she would be unable to work or visit family for 2-5 months. She could also come with her tourist visa but it would look suspiciously like immigration fraud if we were married within two or three months of her arrival. We decided to have the civil wedding here. This way, the marriage is recognized in both countries and I can petition to bring her into the country as a family member. This process still takes 6-8 weeks but she will be able to continue working in her consultario and when she has her green card, she will be free to come and go as she pleases. We are trying to consider the civil wedding as just part of the application process and we are planning the religious wedding in August. That gives us 11-12 weeks to complete the immigration process.
The “official” wedding will be in the 450 year-old chapel of the Hacienda San Martin in the mountains outside Mexico City. The brunch reception will be in the garden behind the chapel. There are pictures of the hacienda grounds at www.flickr.com/photos/ba_leedy. Just look for the Hacienda San Martin set.
History
We met in Indiana in August of 2002. Ana was spending the month working in several of the migrant camps in the state. The last week of her trip was in Anderson and the surrounding camps. I had been talking to our pastor about Hispanic missions for a year or so by this time and we had just received Juan and Leticia Escobar, a pastor from Michoacán, Mexico a few weeks earlier. Because of these events and my friendship with Juan and my availability I was chosen to spend the week with this dentist in the migrant camps. We spent the week discovering that we had many things in common despite very different histories and cultures and language. Fortunately Ana was, and still is, very patient with my Spanish. By the end of the week I had a friend for life. Nothing in my life is that simple though. I’ll explain more about those early days next time. Ana should be contributing her perspective here soon as well.
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