The biggest problem for most fianc's is getting the information package from the embassy. Due to the vagaries of the Belarusian Post Office, my wife's information package never got to her.

The US embassy does not send the information package by registered mail . They send it by regular post. When the CIS postal employees see that the package is from the US embassy, dollar signs start to appear in their eyes.

They open the package, and when they find out it only has information in it, they toss it into the circular round file. If they are jealous or malicious by nature, they probably figure that there is no reason that your fianc' should have a better life than they have, so there is another reason to toss it into the trash.

Or they simply don't care if it gets where it's supposed to go no ulterior motives or complicated schemes just plain incompetence. They are not going to be fired or given a pay raise, so who cares if the mail gets to where it's supposed to go.

After six weeks of calling to the embassy in Warsaw, my fianc' finally got through to an actual employee rather than listening to the omnipresent busy signal. Of course, the US embassy has one phone number and an overworked employee whose job it was to answer the phone.

It Pays To Be Persistent:

The phone probably rings half the day unanswered, while the employees are trying to get some work done.

It was a miracle she got through to talk to someone.

If you've ever tried calling the bank or phone company for any reason other than ordering new services, you know how hard it is to get through the overburdened public number.

The embassy told her that they had mailed the package six weeks earlier, and got no response from her, so they cancelled her interview. They figured she just wasn't interested anymore.

My fianc' begged the embassy to send a new package to her registered mail, but the embassy said 'it wasn't their policy to send mail registered.'

Luckily she got the information package anyway and the rest is history as they say. This was the second time when the Belarusian post office almost interrupted our plans to be together.

The first time was during our initial letter writing and the second time was getting her information packet from the embassy.

The moral of the story: You have to be persistent. It pays off.