What Now?

Prayer. Prayer is huge and it helps--a lot.


We have recently been hosting a few dessert nights at our house. The purpose of these times of fellowship has been to share in more depth the purpose of our trip to Vanuatu. One of the things we have routinely asked those in attendance to do is pray that our visa application make it to the right person for its review. Just getting the visa into the country proved to have its own difficulties.


For nearly 13 weeks Merissa and I waited for the FBI to send the results of our fingerprint analysis. As it turns out, neither one of us has a criminal background. Shocking, I know.


One quick aside: I am currently at the fire station and made a very poor version of a cafe latte using instant cocoa, day old Folgers fireman coffee, and 2%milk. It has musky undertones with an ashtray finish and yet I keep finding myself drinking it.


OK, I'm ready to focus...no I'm not. Get this. The other day Merissa and I had the chance to go to coffee. Just the two of us. On a weekday. It was fabulous. Mer began to talk to me about our son, Ethan. "I know you both are similar in that focusing on certain tasks provides a challenge." she said. "What do you think we can do, as parents, to help Ethan stay on task and get done what we need him to get done?" "Well," I replied, "I don't really know what my issue stems-- wow! Look at that butterfly! Did you see that?! So beautiful." Ahh, butterflies (literal and non) and bunny trails. My poor beloved wife. The butterfly was really lovely though.


Now, back to the story before the other stories. Which was...yes!...our visa application.

Once we received our clean record from the feds, we bundled the rest of our paperwork together and sent it across the Pacific in the expensive care of FedEx. We had been told to send it to a national pastor named Jimmy Opas. His job is to complete the "employer" information and submit the finished visa application to the proper office in Vanuatu. For a few different reasons FedEx was unable to locate/ contact Pastor Opas in order to let him know our package had arrived. One of our new missionary friends in Port Villa, Lori Ellison, made arrangements to pick up the documents on his behalf since he lives about an hour from Port Villa. Fortunately I was armed with this information when a FedEx employee called me asking where the package should be returned to. Upon informing the well meaning employee other arrangements had been made, she stated our documents would be only be held for a couple more days. Lori was returning from picking up our application when she ran into Pastor Opas! He had traveled to Port Villa for the day and thought running into Lori was accidental! Au contraire mon frere. That's just God gettin' 'er done.

Thanks to all who have been praying for our visa application's safe arrival in Vanuatu.