Immigration and Outreach

jm and my little daddykins

Hey Everyone!

I promised an update on John's immigration status.
What a crazy story! you wont believe the half of it, so i'll just give u the other half.
After returning THREE times to the Immigration office, we still do not have things squared away. An encounter with the official in charge ended with a shrug and a casual, "Well, you dont have the right visa to get a marriage work permit exemption. So you should just fly over to Miami and pick one up and come back."
*slack-jawed gape*
I kid you not.

So currently the hold up appears to be that John should have somehow known (by a sixth sense, of course, seeing as the information was printed nowhere by Immigration) that he should have had a special visa in order to be able to change his status from visitor to volunteer worker.
This was told to us after we paid our non refundable stash of cash.
If our petition is denied, the money is forfeited, John needs to go to Miami, apply for a new visa, come back and reapply for a change of status, along with another stash of cash to re-do his application.

This is serious friends. Not only does it demonstrate the need for Jesus in our government system, and just how broken and disjointed the system is, but it also shows us that satan will stop at nothing to hinder John and I from being in Jamaica in this season.
That actually encourages me, strangely enough. What is satan so threatened by...hmmm....

Still we press on, with one more trip in the very near future back to kingston Immigrations office to beg for mercy and walk in God's favour. Pray with us that they will overlook this ridiculous rule that was never written anywhere, and just grant us the status change seeing as all our other specified information is perfectly in order and we have already paid the price!

And on another note, we prepare for outreach to St. Vincent coming up in January. For each of our tickets we will need to raise $800US, in addition to our fees once we are on the ground serving. This is an awesome opportunity to scout out Mayreau just to see if God has it on His heart for John and I to join the work there someday, but if not, it is still so awesome to fill in as parent-figures for the young people in our DTS group stepping out in faith and experiencing God on a totally new level. It truly is exciting. I'll keep you up to date on all this outreach prepping as it develops.

LOVE YOU FOREVER! 
d & j