Road to Indonesia---Banking

 After a year and a half of being locked out of our China bank account, we seemingly are on the last leg!!  This summer we finally were able to fulfill the directions sent out the beginning of December, 2020 as to how finally we could get our money without sending our actual passports to China (which was just impossible).  We wrote a letter assigning banking privileges to a friend in Beijing. We had the letter and photocopies of our passports notarized. Then the paperwork had to be verfied by the Pennsylvania Secretary of State.  (We did these steps 8 months ago before we went to Indonesia, but the notary had exchanged our paperwork and made Rick's mine, and mine Rick's. And so we repeated the process first thing in the US this summer.) Then these forms must be verfied by the Chinese embassy.  We had to hire an agent to do this step (expensive).  All of this paperwork has been sent to our friends/co-workers in China!.....But, as often happens with us, the old ATM cards which we need to replace as the first step got left at the agent's.  These are now enroute to the friend as well.  This friend will take everything to the bank and figure out the process of how to move the money from China to the US.  This process is not going to be necessarily easy.  You can only move a certain number of dollars per year, and I think it might exceed that amount. So even after we wire transfer (I wonder how we do that?), then we have to figure out the rest. We know some options, but have to walk the maze to figure it out. God has His own reasons for the delay.  At least we have not needed the wages that we have accrued there.  Please pray that this moves smoothly and is not too much bother to the friends and family involved. 

Today is vacation.  It is Indonesia Independence Day from the Netherlands in 1945.  I really do not know what the celebrations would normally consist of.  Because of covid, things are moderately locked down.