What it looks like to try and get a visa

As many of you know, we are looking/praying/waiting for our residence visa. Once we have this, we can buy and register a car, get a post office box, get a bank account and cross the border to the other side of town without incident. More importantly, it gives us a sense of stability, legitimacy and removes a BIG layer of stress around visa issues. These are important things.

We had one really good idea for a business and Tom had a wonderful local partner(all businesses need a local partner) and paper work was in process and then it all fell through. Apparently the level of visa they would give us was the same as a Pakistani day laborer. This means we wouldn't get any of the benefits listed above.

After praying and thinking some more, we were connected with another local friend who is a well-known businessman in town. Tom was actually just asking his advice about something else when he asked Tom to consider working with him on his business and getting a visa through him.

We were praying that God would open the doors that were appropriate and we would just continue to walk forward as long as the doors were open. There were concerns and uncertainty about this second situation, but we figured we'd just keeping walking forward.

Once the paperwork started we began another type of roller coaster ride. It has felt like every week we have one day where we are SURE the visa is coming in the next 24 hours and then another day where we are SURE the whole thing is going to fall through. That takes a lot of emotional energy.

Meanwhile, Tom gets calls from our local friend/partner - some times two a day - and has to jump in the car with all the appropriate documents and rush down to an office and watch the paint dry as the Arab bureaucratic machine does its thing. So slowly.

Getting all the documents has had its own issues - different people in the same office say different things. This is time consuming and expensive. It costs about $80 to have something FedExed from the US. It involves crossing the border and that is it's own story.

Our local partner friend is very very frustrated and doesn't understand why they bureaucracy is turning down our visa. Today it looks very very bleak. We don't know what to do next and have no real options that wouldn't involved a whole new idea and process.

I often try and console myself by thinking about all the hassle that the American IRS gives to immigrants. What we are living through is not some special torture and not some personal vendetta against us. Many many people have to do this visa dance all over the world. It is just tiring and discouraging.

We KNOW the Lord brought us back here at this time. He was so clear in communicating that in so many ways. We aren't losing hope in that....we just don't see anyway forward at the moment. It feels like we've been brought back here only to spend an enormous amount of energy figuring out how to stay. sigh.