Okay, this is why PB is good. It's just as you and Avi suspected - the variable is being tested prior to the Lua script running. If you want to see how to determine that yourself then look at your pastebin entry. Lines 48-72 are the dialplan hunting. The executing starts at line 80 with the Lua script. The Lua script is being executed after the variable is being check, which you'll see on line # 66.