I called the US Embassy in Manila tonight. The nice lady on the phone informed me that they have received the approved petition in Manila but there was no scheduled date yet for the interview. I asked if there was anything I could do to help speed up the process ( ) . To my surprise, she said if there was an urgent reason for it that they might be able to do something for us. I calmly laughed and said that there was no other reason except for the fact that we are in love and getting very anxious!!  

She said that Alera should receive her packet in June or July. I asked why that long. She replied that is could be sooner. (I am sure she was just playing it safe!!) I asked if it was OK if I called and bugged every few days. She laughed and said "No problem!" So, I will continue to do that!!

I am hoping to be able to pick up Alera by the end of June or early July. We will keep our fingers crossed!!   

In the meantime, I will keep calling....

05/05/2004

Here is a quick update..... Maybe the lady at the Embassy was right. It looks as though we will have to wait longer than I expected!! :-( I continue to call every 3-4 days and I we still have not had an interview date assigned. Looks like I might be spending my summer apart from Alera Mae after all.....   :-(

Alera and I are remaining strong and hopeful. All we can do is hope for a smooth turn-around AFTER the date has been assigned. At this point, we still might get lucky and get a July interview. Once her interview date is assigned, I will be able to schedule my time off from work to fly over to Cebu, spend a week with her family, bring her back to the US, get married, have a honeymoon, and do LOTS of shopping!! LOL

I love Alera Mae with all my heart and all my soul... I will wait as long as it takes to be with her. She is my everything, and I am just thankful that God has allowed us to meet and fall in love with one another!! We will make it....   :-)

05/26/2004

I called the US Embassy tonight. I was expecting the usual response that no date has been assigned yet. However, to my surprise, the Embassy employee cheerfully told me that Alera's interview date has been assigned for Friday, August 13th at 7:00AM!!! WOO-HOO!

I called Alera Mae immediately! I did wake her, but she did not seem to mind it after I told her the AWESOME news!! We are both so happy to find out the news and are relieved that the wait is finally over. Now it is time for me to schedule my flight arrangements to escort her back to her new home as well as send her the finalized documents she will need for the interview and necessary funds to complete the interview and medical examination.

It has been a pretty difficult time for us to be apart from each other. But we both can sense the end is near and we will be able to start our beautiful life together. Thank you all for your kind words and support through this process. We feel very blessed to have such wonderful friends and family to help us keep our chins high!!  :-)

06/13/2004

I just wanted to provide a quick update...

I have already scheduled my vacation and made flight arrangements to meet Alera Mae in Cebu. I will be leaving on August 25th and will spend 10 days in the Philippines before flying back home. We plan to be married fairly quickly as I will only have a couple weeks of vacation left before having to return to work. The closest Saturday happens to be September 11th!! (9-11) I am not sure yet if we will be married on this date, but it might happen!! If anything, we will make it a happy day for our lives, anyway!

We will keep you posted on the progress. I will also post Alera's itinerary for Manila once I have the details. We hope that this timeline is able to provide other's help in terms of what to expect during the process of applying for a K-1 fiancée visa!!

07/04/2004

Alera Mae flew to Manila on Thursday, August 5th. She attended her medical examination at St. Luke's on the following day (Friday) and then went back on the following Monday to get her results. She found out that there was some question regarding her chest x-ray result. They wanted to run some more tests (sputum cultures) 2 weeks from that date. She will need to go back to St. Luke's on Monday, August 23rd. So, at this time, she has not officially passed her medical exam yet!!

Alera Mae attended a local doctor (when she arrived home from Manila last week) who specializes in heart and lung disease in Cebu. He had another chest x-ray done and has ruled out any major issues so far (tuberculosis, cancer, etc.) He says that she has some scarring and streaks that are old and look like they might have been from some sort of virus long ago or that perhaps she has asthma. She has never been diagnosed with asthma, but she very well could have it!!!

On another note, St. Luke's DID authorize her to attend her interview at the Embassy, even though she was not medically cleared yet. She attended her interview on Friday, August 13th. She said she felt like everything went OK, but she will need to bring her results from St. Luke's back to the US Embassy once she receives the final authorization. Alera Mae then flew home to Cebu that afternoon.

Her extra testing will begin at St. Luke's on Monday, August 23rd. She flew back to Manila on Sunday and we are hoping for the best.

I will be flying to Manila on Tuesday, August 24th and will meet up with Alera on Wednesday at 8:40pm (Manila time) and hopefully we will have the good news that she can re-visit the Embassy for her final interview on the following day.

We will keep our fingers crossed and I will post an update soon after!!  

08/22/2004

Alera Mae visited St. Luke's for 3 days in a row to do the sputum tests. I went with her on the 4th day (Thursday) and was able to visit the doctor with her. He explained that there have been a very large number of tuberculosis cases that have been discovered in Filipina visa applicants and that many cases were discovered once they arrived in the USA. So the USA has put strict guidelines on applicants x-ray examinations. The doctors are all instructed to check the x-rays carefully and when there is any sign of possible lung disease, they need to have the applicants undergo further testing and/or treatments. When I was in the sputum test area, there must have been 50+ Filipinos getting tested!!

Anyway, Alera Mae had negative results concerning her sputum being contagious. The doctor mentioned that there might be a possibility of asthma or maybe remnants of an old case of the flu or pneumonia that could have caused the concern for the streaks and scarring found in her x-ray. The doctor authorized the release of her medical records and we will take them to the Embassy on Monday. Hopefully everything will go smoothly and Alera will be approved at that time!!

On a final note, the doctor mentioned that the Embassy tends to reject 20% of all cases that have been re-tested like Alera. He said it all depends on what the consulate feels at the time about the seriousness of the cause for why a person is re-tested. We will keep our fingers crossed!!

We hope that the fact that Alera Mae got tested in Cebu (in addition to the Manila testing), that we will have no problems! And we will be sure to provide those results to the Embassy (if needed), too!!

08/26/2004

Well, we just wasted our time here in Manila waiting to see a consulate! When we arrived today, we found out that St. Luke's had not delivered the results yet to the Embassy!! And the lady behind the counter told us there was nothing we could do about it and to go home and wait to be notified!! So we spent a weekend here in Manila for nothing!! That really got me fuming!! I went to a security officer and found out that we could go to 'Window X' and possibly get more information. It took about 30 minutes or so, but the nice gentleman there told us that they just received the medical results and that a consulate should be reviewing the documents within the nest 48-72 hours or so. He advised us to fly back to Cebu and mentioned that if the consulate denied our visa request, we should be notified right away. This still did not make me comfortable, but it was a better explanation than we got at the other window. 

We are flying back to Cebu tomorrow and will hope for the best!!!

08/30/2004

I waited until this week to call the Embassy to find out the progress. According to their records, the case still needed to be reviewed by a consulate. They told me it might be another week or so before that happens. I asked if there was anything I could do to speed the process up!! The simple reply was "NO" and "be patient". Anyway, I will continue to call every 2 days or so.  I am mostly aggravated right now due to the fact that normally a person knows whether or not they are approved for their visa BEFORE they leave the Embassy!! We are STILL sitting around waiting for the results and we were SUPPOSED to fly back to the USA yesterday (the 5th)!!

Hopefully, things will be positive for us and we will do our best to remain strong for each other as we wait for the verdict! We will keep our fingers crossed!!

09/06/2004

We called the Embassy today for the third time. We received the same info as usual... a consulate still needed to review the case. We were so angry that we decided to visit the consulate for the US Embassy located there in Cebu City. (The Embassy office is located in the Waterfront Hotel near the Marriott we were staying at.) However, when we arrived there, the office was closed due to the observance of the September 11th attacks!!! We were not having a very lucky week!!

Well, the day was the 'same ole, same ole' until we received a call from Alera's mother at 5:15pm. She called us to inform us that Alera Mae officially received her visa this afternoon!!!! OH MY GOODNESS!!!! Were we hearing this right??!!?? WOOO-HOOOO!!!

We took a taxi over to her place and saw it for ourselves! It was a dream come true!! WE FINALLY RECEIVED OUR GIFT FROM GOD!!

Alera Mae and I will be flying back to the United States this coming Thursday, September 16th!! We are both VERY excited and are glad that the wait is over!!

So, to EVERYONE who IS or MIGHT BE going through this process... have patience and faith throughout the whole thing!! Your dream might feel like waiting forever... but in the end, it is well worth it!

I called the airlines and scheduled our flight for the 14th. All that is left now is to get the CFO stamp in Alera's passport on the 13th!! Wish us luck! ;-)

09/10/2004

Uhhh-Ohhhhh!! We ran into ANOTHER snag. We went to the CFO office for Alera to get her official stamp placed in her passport in order for her to be able to leave the country. (This is normal process. Alera already attended the CFO seminar a month earlier!!) Anyway, a representative in the CFO office accidentally tore the page in Alera 's passport while she was attempting to remove the stamp tool. The page was not completely torn out of the passport, but they claimed it was damaged bad enough to require a NEW passport to be issued!!! When we heard this, we about passed out!! Why, oh WHY are we going through ALL THIS!! Sheesh!! They said it would take 2 days to get the NEW passport and then we could pick it up.

When I called the airlines to reschedule our flights for the 16th, they informed me that the soonest we could get a flight was on the 21st!!!! I could not believe what I was hearing!! I was SO stressed at this point!! But we had to accept the date and move on!

On a side note, we decided to go to Bohol tomorrow with a few members of Alera's family!! Feel free to click (HERE) to see some pictures that I took during the trip. Perhaps a small 3-day getaway will get our minds off of the visa thing and help us to remain positive throughout this process!!!

09/13/2004

We got back from Bohol yesterday. We went to the CFO office today to pickup the NEW passport. Alera Mae was very nervous because her original passport was attached to the documents for US Immigration. Special instructions informed us that the passport needed to stay attached to the documents and not be tampered with. She was afraid that the NEW passport being attached would nullify the visa and/or the documents would be tampered with (or something of that nature!) Anyway, we received the NEW passport, but it was stapled to the OLD passport, which was STILL attached to the immigration documents!! This seemed weird to me, because she now had TWO passports!! When we inspected it, the only problem I could see was that the visa issued has the OLD passport number printed on it!! We were not sure if this would create a problem with US immigration, so we called the US Embassy in Manila to inquire about it. The lady on the other end of the phone said that we indeed would have to go back to Manila and visit the Embassy to have them reprint a NEW visa with an updated passport number on it!!! I was a bit suspicious, so we decided to  pay another visit to the US Embassy consulate in Cebu City (Again, it is located at the Waterfront Hotel and Casino near the Marriott.) When we explained the situation, the consulate conformed that we should visit the US Embassy in Manila before leaving the country.

So, we will plan to leave Cebu one day sooner and be sure to do that!! And when I called to confirm our flights one last time, I was just informed that our flights are actually scheduled for the 22nd (and NOT the 21st as I had already planned!!) So, we need to re-schedule our flight to Manila to make it the 21st now!! Arrrrggghhhh!!

Wow, does this whole process start to make you sick like it has already done to me!  :-(

09/17/2004

We had dinner with Alera's family today. We took some really great pictures to share with you. Feel free to check them out if you like by clicking  (HERE) .

09/18/2004

We had a very nice going away party with Alera Mae's family last night. We must have had over 170 different friends and relatives show up to wish us luck and see Alera one last time before she left for the USA. We had a wonderful time!! We will miss her family very much, but will make it a point to visit as often as we can afford n the future!!

Feel free to click (HERE) to see some pictures that I took during the party.

As for Manila, we are heading there today to take care of the final change and hopefully we will have NO MORE ISSUES to deal with!! :-)

09/21/2004

We just wasted our time here in Manila, AGAIN!! After submitting the NEW passport (along with the OLD passport) at 'Window X', we waited for over 2 hours!! Finally, when we get called up to pick it up, THEY GAVE US BACK THE PACKAGE BUT NEVER DID ANYTHING TO THE VISA!! They left the NEW passport attached to the OLD passport and told us that "the passport was fine just the way it is" and "do not worry about US Immigration". Now, why in the world did they tell us to come back to Manila if they did not need to do anything???!!!???

Oh well.... we are officially flying to the USA tonight. Our day has come at last!!! It is just a shame that we did not have another day to spend with Alera's family instead of hanging around Manila for another day!! :-(

09/22/2004

Ok, Ok!! This is the LAST update I will make to our timeline. We arrived in Tampa, Florida on Thursday, September 23rd at 2:35pm. We finally arrived at Alera's NEW home!!

Alera Mae and I officially were married on Friday, October 8th at approximately 3:15pm!!! We decided to have a civil ceremony for now! We will plan a nice ceremony for a date in the not so distant future... hopefully before the year's end!!

We are very happy to be together but are amazed at the amount of hurdles we needed to clear in order for us to finally make this whole thing happen. When we read this timeline, it is simply astonishing to see how much effort and patience the entire process took us! Sometimes, it got VERY hard for us emotionally. It definitely took it's toll on the BOTH of us!!

But, as we have posted before to everyone.......  please be strong for each other and be willing to have plenty of patience!! You CAN get through this! And when it is ALL said and done, you will know in your hearts that if it is meant to be, it can & will happen for you, too!!

GOD BLESS EVERYONE FOR SUPPORTING US AND LOVING US THE WAY YOU HAVE!!  :-)

10/08/2004