The process of getting Hayden's visa for Spain was pretty complicated. About a week after receiving his mission call, he got a letter from the church travel department with all the information about how to get a passport and visa. He immediately went in and got his passport application turned in, and we started the visa process. Many countries require their visa applicants to show a statewide criminal background check. 49 states do this check. One does not. The state that we live in, as a matter of fact, is the one state that does not. So instead of driving down to the state dept and getting a printout of a background check, we had to get him fingerprinted by a law enforcement officer, then get that notarized, plus fill out an application and pay a bunch of money to the FBI to get an FBI clearance. We were told that it would take anywhere from one to two months to get it back. Once that was received, after four short weeks, we had to get an apostille on it, plus send in a whole stack of more papers and pictures and his passport to the church travel department, with the instructions "Don't call us, we'll call you." And, we were told, it typically took four months. We had just under four months until his report date. He is to report to Madrid, so we were anxious to get the visa so that the plans wouldn't have to change.
So I'm sure you can imagine our delight when we got a call from the travel department today telling us that his visa was approved! He will be traveling to Salt Lake next weekend to finalize it, and then he will be traveling to Spain in July, reporting on the 24th to the Spain MTC. So glad that all the work that we did to get things completed in time were rewarded with a visa a full 41 days before report date!
