Leanne Madsen — U.S. Citizen — 9-June-2008
June 9th, 2008Today was a Red, White, and Blue, letter day for our family! Leanne Madsen was sworn in this afternoon as a citizen of the United States of America!
Leanne was eligible to apply for U.S. citizenship in April of this year — which she did. When she submitted her application, the INS told her that they were swamped,
and had huge backlogs of applications, and that she should not expect to hear from the INS for 18 months. At about the same time Leanne and Spencer decided to move to Utah. Spencer left in May, and we planned to move Leanne to Utah on June 10th. We all assumed that Leanne would have to travel back to Dallas for her interview and naturalization ceremony in 2009. However, to everyone’s surprise, in early May Leanne received a letter from the INS instructing her to show up for her citizenship interview on June 9th at 7:00am. So, early this morning Leanne drove down to the Dept. of Homeland Security offices for her interview and citizenship test (which she passed). After her interview was completed, the INS officer told her to show up at 2:00pm today to be sworn in as a U.S. citizen. You don’t say “No” to the INS.
So, we changed our plans for the day, and showed up at the Dept. of Homeland Security in Dallas for the naturalization ceremony. As we left the proceedings this afternoon, Leanne stated that this was one of the Lord’s miracles in her life. In retrospect, I would have to agree. Only the Lord could have cut through all the layers of INS bureaucratic red tape to arrange for Leanne to have her citizenship interview, test, and naturalization ceremony all occur on the day before she leaves for Utah — 16 months ahead of schedule. We thank the Lord for this great blessing in our family.
I’ve included pictures of the naturalization ceremony here.
Reid