Update on Immigration Issues

We had an appointment yesterday at the Dutch Immigration department, so after all 4 of us, as well as Chris, took the train into a suburb of Amsterdam for the meeting, we found out that because our marriage had not been registered with the city before we came they could not take our application. So, we first have to take our certified marriage certificate to the city, who they said is going to investigate it to make sure we are authentically married, and then once they have approved it, we can return to immigration to turn in our applications. Of course, when we were at the city I specifically asked if I needed to come back to them to register the marriage first, or after the Immigration and the man told me, twice, that it was fine and just to bring the marriage certificate after immigration. Just an example of how the different agencies often don't know what the other is doing and why it is so difficult to get through the process.

This is good and bad. Good because, the immigration department has given us permission to delay applying again and as long as we're "in process" we can be here legally - also the longer we delay - the longer they have to decide to approve or deny - at this rate we could be "in process" till we leave in June! Of course this is not so great because we have to travel to immigration and yesterday didn't really profit us much - of course God has His reasons to draw this out, but it is rather inconvenient! Also, until we get the applications turned it they won't give us a registration number that we need to open a bank account, and thus be able to turn on phone or internet service, so we are still without much communication - big inconvenience!

What is really confusing to me is this country gives all rights of married couples to anyone living together, but since we are we have to fill out all this other information and get it certified. They actually told us that it would have been easier had we not been married - Go figure!