Documents

Yesterday I was finally able to get all our educational documents together and mailed off to Ottawa to get legalized. I had a bit of a miscommunication with the Colombian Embassy. I asked them that I needed my documents apostilled (American thing we don't have in Canada). They told me that the Colombian Consulate would legalize them once they came with the visa application. I thought that meant that we didn't need to send them to Ottawa to get legalized by the Canadian government... I was wrong. Meanwhile two weeks had past. I did some more research and found out that it takes 15-25 days to get the documents legalized if you mail them in. Since I didn't have any plans to visit Ottawa any time soon and didn't have 25 days to wait, I wasn't sure what to do. I phoned the government office and found out that I could mail the documents to a friend in Ottawa and they could take the in and get them legalized while they waited. Praise the Lord I have wonderful friends who were willing to do that for us! Christie and Graeme are wonderful people that just so happen to live in Ottawa and were willing to help us out. So those documents were sent out yesterday and my hope is that we'll have them back by the end of next week. The other great news is that the part of our visa application that we need from ECA is going to be sent up to the States with a teacher who is travelling on Thursday then mailed out soon after that. We may even be able to mail our visa application in by the end of next week. Then it is 4 days to process the application plus mailing time. I am praying that we'll have it all sorted out in the next three weeks! That would be plenty of time before our trip to Ontario (which we need our passports for since we are flying through the States) and would allow us to go climbing in the States after we get back. It would be a huge answer to prayer and a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. It is all in God's hands and in His timing.

We spoke at all five church services this past weekend. Although there weren't too many people who said they would donate (which was a little surprising), Matt and I were able to connect with some of Matt's friends that we haven't seen in awhile. Two couples said they would donate and a few more were really excited for us and wanted our newsletters. One guy wants to come visit us, which would be so much fun! Oh and a couple of Matt's grade nine boys want to come visit as well. We'll see if maybe the church would want to send a youth team next year for spring break... or maybe just a group of our grade 9s! It's neat how God brings us connections. Most of the people who came to talk to us either had a direct connect with us or with Colombia. I mean that makes sense but it was great to see how many people were from Colombia or Brazil and wanted to chat. We met a lovely lady named Margarita, who is from Colombia and teaches Spanish classes at a leisure centre. She invited us to join the class for free. So last Monday we sped out to Mission (about 50 minutes away) for our first class. Matt and I both felt like we were way ahead of the class but its nice to get more exposure to the language. Every little bit helps. We've also been working on our Rosetta Stone program, which is fantastic. Our language study is coming along. We're working on thinking in Spanish and expanding our vocabulary. God always provides, although it isn't always in the way we think it'll happen! Keep the faith!