Chad Wells Family Blog

We received our passports today! We booked tickets to go back to New Guinea on Thursday.

I talked to the PNG Embassy in Brisbane today. The lady I spoke with said that she received our passports, they have been stamped, and she will put them in the overnight mail today. So, we should have our passports back in hand tomorrow! Praise God!

Today is a national holiday, so we are unable to get any update on where our passports are in this mail system. However, as of yesterday, they had been delivered to the New Guinea Embassy’s box in Brisbane, Australia. So, hopefully Monday we will have good news and will be able to schedule our flights to go back to New Guinea!

Dave Milson, a man who attends Trinity Baptist Church, invited me to come to his Religious Education class today. This is very similar to the class that we teach back in the bush, in New Guinea. It’s a ½ hour that is set aside each week for the religious education of the school children. Even though I do not have a “blue card” (which is a certification allowing a person to teach or help out with kids in the public school system) the deputy principal made an exception and I was able to come in and teach the class with Dave.

I spoke with the Papua New Guinea Embassy in Washington D.C. last Friday and worked out an arrangement where our visa approval could be sent to the PNG Embassy in Brisbane, Australia. So, this morning, I called and talked to the consulate officer in Brisbane to verify that our documentation had arrived. She seemed very distraught and irritated that American citizens would be able to get PNG visas at an Australian PNG consulate. I verified with her that I would be flying in with my newly acquired passports in order for her to stamp them with the new visa. Upon hearing this she became even more aggravated and said that if I arrived in person she would not stamp them for me and would not guarantee them to be stamped in the near future. However, if I mailed them she stated that she would most likely have them to me by the middle of next week. So, as hard as it was, we put our visa application forms and our newly acquired passports in the mail, once again! This left me with a sick feeling for the rest of the day!

Since our flight back to Cairns didn’t leave until 7:30pm, we all enjoyed walking around Sydney, and over the Sydney Harbor Bridge. What a beautiful view of the harbor and the Opera House!

We all flew to Sydney this morning and went in to the U.S. Embassy in order to get emergency passports. We were missing one document that we didn’t realize we needed (until we were standing at the window at the embassy) and we wouldn’t have been able to get it for at least a week! However, the consulate officer made an exception in our case and they were able to issue us our emergency passports. We spent the rest of the day walking around Sydney.

Today we worked on putting together the paperwork necessary to get new passports issued. All the supporting documents, etc. Hopefully we’ll be heading to the U.S. Embassy in Sydney, Australia the first of next week.

The word came back today – both the U.S. and the Australian postal services have closed their investigations and have deemed our passports officially “lost”.

Asa, the gentleman who is in charge of our investigation, had some good news today. At least, we think he does! Based on the questions that the U.S. Postal Service is asking he believes that our passports are in some type of immigrations holding area in Los Angeles.

We’ve been talking all week to the Australian Post, who is continuing their investigation into our passports’ disappearance. There is still no word, however, now the United States Postal Service has also opened up an investigation. Hopefully we’ll hear something soon!