It has been suggested that a 500 second gap in the middle of my IVR app could be the cause of a fetch taking too long and returning 8 minutes later.   Where in the gateway would the fetchtimeout value be set if I wanted to see its set value?
 
"  My guess is that your fetchtimeout is set to 8 minutes in the gateway by default, or something odd like that.  Set the fetchtimeout VoiceXML property to 5s - that way if the gateway is trying to retrieve an audio file, it'll fail out after 5 seconds of
delay (not 8 minutes).  See if that helps"
 
Thanks for your help!!