Passport

Whew! I (Nancy) have my passport back! I know I shouldn't worry after I have prayed and asked God to take care of a situation, but I did anyway. Last week on Wednesday, a representative of the American Embassy was in Debrecen, offering services to Americans and Hungarians. I needed some additional pages put in my passport. It was getting full of stamps, but I didn't want to get a new passport since my Hungarian residence visa is in this passport and it's just more convenient to get pages added to this one. The embassy representative and his assistants were very helpful and I had no trouble ordering the new pages. They had to take my passport back to Budapest to insert the new pages and asked if I wanted to go to Budapest to pick up the passport or if I wanted to use a courier service to have it delivered to my door. It was easy for me to decide--to go to Budapest would cost me about $75 in gas and an entire day. The courier only cost $9. I ordered the courier service. They told me my passport should be delivered either Friday or Monday. It didn't come Friday, but on Monday morning, the courier called and said he had my passport and was waiting at the gate. I met the courier at the gate, paid him, signed the delivery slip, went inside and opened the package--it was someone else's passport! I tried calling the courier back--no answer. So, I called the Embassy. There a kind man said he would try to sort it out. When he called back, he said the courier service had mistakenly put my passport in someone else's envelope and hers in mine. I gave him the name on the passport I had. Later that day the courier arrived to pick up the wrong passport. Mine was to be delivered on Tuesday. Tuesday afternoon, the courier's office called to say they would deliver it Wednesday. Thursday morning I called the embassy again. My passport was delivered 30 minutes later. It was the right passport this time. Praise the Lord!

I was so happy to have my passport back again. I felt lost without it. Even though I had no plans to leave the country for a couple of weeks, it still bothered me that I couldn't leave if I had to since I had no papers. It is sure nice to have my identity back!