Preparing for Milano

well, 2008 is here … and in supposedly just a few months, march to be exact, I should get a call from the Italian Consulate giving me details on when my appointment will be exactly. This upcoming appointment will be to submit my mom’s citizenship papers, which … unlike mine …  should be a relatively straightforward process. Once her citizenship is ackowledged, then we can start with the expensive portion: getting my adoption recognized. She has to file the paperwork though in order to get that rolling because it has to be an italian citizen to file for the case.

I still have a few more details to wrap up… i need to get a passport size photo from my mom and then make copies of everything for the consulate. But other than that, things are pretty much in order. I’ll let everyone know what the interview date is when I know.

dave

Want to wish everyone a happy new year.

In a few months, i’ll be going to the consulate to apply for mom’s citizenship. Assuming that goes without a hitch, once she is recognized as an Italian citizen, we can proceed with getting the adoption recognized in Italy.

On the spiritual side of things, God has been doing a work in me to drive out things that will need to be removed when we are in Italy. So I’m thankful for the trials and the things that are happening, and the renewed fervor for seeking God and knowing him more. I’m also just a few days away from having finished my first reading of the entire bible in Italian. kinda stoked about that. I’m going to start over with another italian version when i’m done.

Well, God bless and keep us in prayer for this new year.

dave

Sorry it took me a few days to update this… well, nearly a week… but we got the apostilles on the 2 California docs. It was really pretty easy. Big line at the state department, but it still went pretty fast and we were outta there in about 20 minutes.

Lunch with Charles and Laura was perfect.

The Fashion district was a total wash. Maybe we just didn’t know where to go, but we found nothing.

I’m scanning the translations, and apostilles today, and arranging Moms application.

dave

well, got the translations back yesterday. The translator actually translated 2 more docs than necessary so it costs me a bit more, but I will need them in the future so no problem now.

Shelly and I are heading to the State department in the Reagan Building downtown LA tomorrow. We’re looking forward to it because we are going to take the train in, go to the state department to get the two docs apostilled, then go to lunch with Charles Paul [and hopefully Laura his wife too], one of the worship leaders we are blessed to work with and then head down to the fashion district to check out a few deals.

Hey all,

I’m sending 5 documents over to the translator to get prepared for my moms citizenship. I will have to get her registered first before we can proceed with anything else, so I will need these 5 docs translated and 2 with an Apostille. That means I will need to go to the State Dept office in downtown LA next week and get that taken care of. The docs will cost $50 each for translation, so $250 total, + $52 to get 2 docs apostilled. So a little over $300 to get prepared for moms citizenship. And I’ll have to drive down to San Diego to help her with the application and getting it notarized etc. I’ll let you all know how it goes as things are happening.

ciao,

dave

OK. the lawyer says that I need to 1) get my mom registered as an Italian citizen. 2) petition the courts in Italy to have the adoption recognized. The current status is that it would take about a year after mom’s citizenship is granted to get the second stage done. Perhaps more, perhaps less depending on the strength of the evidence. That part is better than I was told, since last I had heard, 10 years was the length of time being talked about.

The cost will be from €3000 to €5000 …..or $4500 to $7000… depending on how many hearings it takes. There is a slight possibility they may supeona mom to appear and testify. Her appearing in Italy before the court will not happen. They may allow the consulate in LA to act as the court if she can get to LA, but even that is sketchy as long as my nonna is still alive and in such dire health.

At this point, it is more money than I would prefer to spend, but not impossible either. My mind is pretty much to go ahead and keep trying. So the next steps are to have the documents I need for moms citizenship application translated into Italian. And then to send that in and get her citizenship. Then we wait until that is cleared and start step 2.

dave

He had spoken with his office in Rome, and they had a few questions about the current status of my mothers citizenship as well as a few other things. I hope to have some answers as to what this all will entail within a few weeks. It seems certain that it will be pretty involved. They were even talking about possibly her having to go to Italy to testify in court. Hope not… I don’t think that will happen, but who knows……

at any rate, wanted to let you know what is going on.

dave