Visas

Praise the Lord for His timing! We don't understand it but His timing is perfect! Our visas arrived at my parent's house in BC while we are in Ontario! I am so thankful that we have them. Even though I haven't actually seen them or touched them, just knowing they are 'safe' makes me feel so much better. Lord willing, we are leaving in three weeks! Wow, there is so much to do but most of it cannot be done till we get back to BC. We are on vacation and will continue to enjoy visiting our family. Praise the Lord for His goodness! I still can't believe we have our visas!

Passport/Visa Stress!!!!

This has been the most stressful experience! It is like the stress of planning an entire wedding crammed in to the last two weeks. I honestly think that is the best way to express it. So Matt's biggest stress of our pre-trip to-do list was the finances... which are going very well thank you. My biggest stress is getting our visas. I was so concerned about it because we had to mail our passports along with our applications to Toronto. The honorary consulate in BC does not handle visa applications. Thankfully we were able to get all our visa applications from our school in Colombia along with all the document legalized, thanks to our wonderful friends Graeme and Christie. With the tracking number on the envelope we found out everything arrived in Toronto on June 1st. The consulate's website as well as other consulate workers have told me that the process takes 4-5 business days. Now at that time there were rumours that Canada Post would go on strike. Upon hearing these rumours, I started emailing the consulate to see if they do go on strike if we could have our documents sent back to us via a currier service. I emailed them four times without a response. Then we started phoning them. By this time they had been in possession of our passports for almost two weeks. Finally I remembered that I had been in contact with  a lady at the consulate in Ottawa. So I decided to email her to see if she could find out anything. Apparently they needed to contact the Ministry in Colombia for an internal procedure and our visas would be processed that day. Then we found out that Canada Post was in full strike mode and they had sealed all mailboxes and were no longer going to be delivering or accepting any more mail. Now we started the process to figure out if the return envelope had been mailed or not. Our tracking number said it could not find our envelope so we were hoping and praying that it hadn't been mailed yet. WRONG! On June 14th they mailed it. I finally got a response (to an email I sent on June 9th) from the Toronto consulate saying that our passports had been mailed on June 14th and that because of the strike we should be sure to track our package. Since our tracking number still doesn't seem to pick up anything, we have NO IDEA where our passports are. We are suppose to cross the boarder into the USA to get on  a plane in Seattle to fly to Detroit to see Matt's family on June 27th. That leaves 5 business days before we leave. Oh Lord we are looking for a miracle! I've heard that there are talks the government wants to force the postal workers to go back to work, however, God only knows when that would all happen. Now that you've read all the latest drama in our lives, please pray for the whole situation. Our backup plans is I use my American passport (to get across the boarder) and driver's license (so I have ID with my married last name on it) to use the ticket we've already purchased for me, we suck up the cost of Matt's ticket then purchase him a new one for him to fly through Canada and pay twice what we've already paid for our two tickets for him to have one ticket in Canada (God bless Canada) or we just don't go. Naturally neither option is ideal.

Thank you for reading my venting session. Please do pray for us. Matt is currently on his way to go rock climbing with some friends and I am about to get ready for an all-nighter with my grade 9 girls small group. We love you. Pray Until Something Happens...