My (Stephanie’s) meeting at the Comune went well this morning. Although we don’t have the certificato di residenza yet, we are well on our way. There have been many visits to the Comune in Deruta, phone calls and emails to the Comune in Alivito (the Comune where our paperwork had to be originally filed), phone calls and emails to the Italian Consulate in Miami, FL (where we were registered when we were in the States), and prayers offered to God (He is not only local, He is everywhere). 🙂

Here are a few highlights from the meeting:

• I asked Sherry DiBagno to go with me this time. I knew I was over my head in Italian :), and (for the first time), we sat down in a side office to work on our “case.”
• During the meeting, a policeman waltzed in, sat down, and asked the man at the Comune to do some paperwork for him first (intermission for me, I guess). 😉 He was a rather jolly policeman, discovered I was from America, and proceeded to tell me that Americans are quite large! On his way out, he asked how to say “Ciao” in English—and then repeated “Good-Bye” to us with a big grin. Then, we returned to our paperwork.
• The man at the Comune manually henpecked (used only one hand) all of our information into the computer (multiple times). He had to ask about a lot of different things (i.e., what different US cities/counties/states were on our documents and how they compared/related to the Italian provinces, municipalities, etc, and where he could enter them in the form on his computer). BUT, the kids and I are now recorded in Deruta as Italian citizens (the meeting took about 1.5 hrs).
• As an amazing bonus, he gave us codice fiscales (tax numbers) for each child. This saves us a trip (with all 5 of us plus a translator) to the government offices in Perugia—and a usually-long wait.
• Another interesting fact that we discovered at the meeting was that the children’s Italian citizenship paperwork was all JUST registered with the Comune in Alvito February 9, 2015. I sent that paperwork in 3 years ago for Daniela and Nino and 18 months ago for Angelo! It appears as though the paperwork was registered shortly after the Comune in Alvito received my request for an updated estratto di matrimoniale (Italian documentation of Tom’s and my marriage). They must have decided they needed to do something with the paperwork since we are now in Italy. Amazing how God works.
• The next step to getting the certificato di residenza for the kids and me is to receive a visit from the police at our new apartment to prove that the contract on the apartment is legitimate. This is our current prayer request. We do not, in fact, live at the apartment yet. And, we probably won’t until April. We don’t even have keys for it.

Our plan for the visit from the police at our new apartment to confirm legitimacy:

• Tom visited our landlady this morning, and got permission to put our name on the buzzer outside the apartment building and on our mailbox (when she figures out which mailbox is ours—neither the mailboxes nor the apartments themselves are numbered…just the building is numbered). 🙂
• We pray that either the police call before they visit the apartment (so that we can go there and meet them there), that they contact our landlady if we’re not there, or that they leave a notice on the outside door that we can bring with us to prove legitimacy. And (we’re not being specific or anything) that they come soon. 🙂

After the police visit, I will return to the Comune in Deruta to request a certificato di residenza for the kids and me.

Maybe this week?

🙂

Thank you for praying. God is good.

In other news–Guess what I found advertised at a coffee shop? You can buy a donkey for only 700 euro! Let me know if you’re interested. 🙂