We miss the USPS

I remember seeing an email before we came to Guatemala titled "You know you've lived on the mission field if..." One of the items on the list was- you've lived on the mission field if you marvel at the speed and efficiency of the US Postal Service. Our experiences here, especially today, have proven that to be true.

Before leaving the states, we sent ourselves some books that we thought we'd like to have during our time here. Other missionaries had recommended that we could use a little-known service from the post office called M-bags. Basically the idea is that your books are going to take a long time to get there, but it's much cheaper than any other shipping option. So we tried it- other people (mostly in other countries) had said that it works great- it may be 4 or 5 months, but your books will be delivered right to your door.

We got a letter last week saying that we had a package (which we assumed was our books)waiting for us at the central post office in Guatemala City. That in itself doesn't sound terribly inconvenient, but let me explain. In order to claim our package, they require that we bring the original letter that they sent us and our passports.

The letter they sent us was dated Oct. 27, and we didn't receive it in until Nov. 12. The inexplicable part of this is that it was sent Oct. 27 from the central post office in Guatemala city, and it took 17 days to make it to our PO box, which is in the same post office! On top of that, the letter states that we only had 10 days from when it was sent to pick up our package.

Since the day we received the letter was already past the deadline, we figured we'd better act quickly. So we had to take the day off from school today, arrange transportation into the city, then accomplish the following:

1. Drive from Antigua to the children's home to get the original letter from the post office. This usually takes about 45 minutes, but today there was a wreck with a truck carrying vegetable oil, so it took about 2 hours. The good thing (for some) was that quite a few local people made off with some free vegetable oil before the police arrived.
2. Drive from the children's home in Villa Nueva to a lawyer's office in Zone 10 of Guatemala City to pick up our passports, which we didn't have because our visas are in the process of being approved.
3. Drive from Zone 10 of Guatemala City to the post office in Zone 1 to pick up our packages. We arrived and they found our books, and then told us we needed to pay the import tax of Q93 (or about $12), but we couldn't pay at the post office- we needed to leave there and go pay at a bank. (My Spanish teacher explained that this is to keep the postal workers from stealing the money).
4. Leave the post office and go to the bank to pay the tax. Unfortunately there was a line of about 50 people and only a few workers, so I had to wait about 45 minutes to pay my $12.
5. Return to the post office- which, thankfully, was still open- and stand in line to show one of the workers our receipt, proving that we had paid the tax. She then told us we had to stand in line and give a copy of the receipt to the person standing right next to her.
6. Stand in line for him, sign a paper, then he told us we needed to stand in line for the lady we had just talked with (still standing about two feet from him) , who would then give us our books.

The worst part about all of this is that we sent two M-bags, and they only had one ready for us today- which means we'll get to do it all over again sometime soon!