We just got an email from our family coordinator. We have updated prayer requests regarding our visa situation, and would definitely appreciate your prayers.
As you may remember, we were hoping to travel on a business visa for this second trip. We actually purchased double-entry visas the last time, which would've allowed us to use them for both trips. However, our region is no longer allowing adoption travel on business visas. So, the visas we have won't work.
Our facilitator in Russia is working with the Ministry of Education in our region, asking them to write a letter which would allow us to obtain an adoption visa. Apparently they haven't been willing to write this letter in the past, but we think they might be willing now that there is no other way for families to travel. Would you please pray for favor in the eyes of the person who needs to write this letter for us?
We will then need to find a consulate that will accept this letter in order to issue our adoption visas. I'm not sure how many consulates there are, honestly. But would you please pray that once we have the letter (I'm trusting there will be one!) that we can find a consulate willing to issue us the visas we'll need?
Of course, all of this stalls our travel plans, as we can't purchase our airplane tickets unless we are sure we will be able to get visas. For those of you who don't get our email ministry prayer updates (just ask if you'd like to be added), we sent out a request last night asking for people with Delta miles who would be willing to donate them to our account. We have enough for one ticket, but needed 100,000 more for the second one. In less than an hour, we had more miles offered to us than we even need! Praise the Lord for His amazing provision.
I am confident that if God is able to get us a court date in time to see Sam on his birthday, and if He can provide more airline miles than we need, He can certainly work out this visa situation with no problem! The problem is me--wanting to book our tickets, and wanting a sense of certainty. But God is faithful and able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine. (Eph. 3:20) Would you please ask and imagine on our behalf?
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4 comments:
I'm praying for the visa situation to be resolved soon so that you can proceed with your travel plans. God bless,
Heather Brandt
I will join you in prayer for these things. I was so delighted to hear about your court date!...We will just pray for all of these details to smooth over quickly so you can travel to pick up your precious little one on the assigned date. How wonderful it will be to see how the Lord answers! We'll be in touch,
Melanie
We were the VERY last people to get away with just paying a fee for traveling on a business visa last week and I asked my translator what would happen to people adopting from NN in the future ( I was thinking of you and another person when I asked this ). She told me that it wouldn't affect people getting court dates in the future and that it wouldn't be a problem to travel on a business visa. Good luck and congratulations :).
I just happened upon your blog today and join in the prayers for your upcoming travel. We brought home two beautiful children (a brother and sister ages 2 & 4) from NN in Dec. 2002 so was delighted to learn of another family adopting from the same region. God bless you!
Carol Taylor, Juneau, Alaska
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