Here is our latest prayer letter for April through June.
Urgent Prayer Request
We have an urgent prayer need and that is our visa situation. While on this furlough our children’s passports expired, and we renewed them back in December. Since the passports were renewed, we also have to complete visas again for the children. We sent the paperwork out for that in January and after a delay on the PNG side, everything needed was submitted to immigration in PNG in May. The first part of June, we received an email informing us PNG immigration is backed up and taking up to six months to process visas. Here is an excerpt from that email: “You might need to pray for a miracle with regard to your kids' visas. …….. the immigration office is thousands of visas behind and grossly understaffed. It is so bad that everyone is howling about it. It has been the subject of newspaper articles and we know personally of several horror stories. Our own passports have been in their possession waiting for our visas for about 6 months.” Under normal circumstances our visas should have been completed by the 25th of June, which is the day I am writing this. I have called the PNG embassy in D.C. and the visas are not ready. They would not even give me a time frame for when they would be completed! I was informed to just check back week after week.
My last meeting on this furlough is tonight (June 25th) and then we are ready to return. We were hoping to be back in PNG by mid July. We know the Lord is in control and has a reason for this. Please pray the Lord will intervene and allow our visas to come through. The situation leaves us sort of in a limbo. We will probably make arrangements to head back to Alaska to wait this out. I am also considering scheduling some other meetings as well. We need the Lord’s wisdom and direction. We truly desire to return to PNG ASAP!
We have an urgent prayer need and that is our visa situation. While on this furlough our children’s passports expired, and we renewed them back in December. Since the passports were renewed, we also have to complete visas again for the children. We sent the paperwork out for that in January and after a delay on the PNG side, everything needed was submitted to immigration in PNG in May. The first part of June, we received an email informing us PNG immigration is backed up and taking up to six months to process visas. Here is an excerpt from that email: “You might need to pray for a miracle with regard to your kids' visas. …….. the immigration office is thousands of visas behind and grossly understaffed. It is so bad that everyone is howling about it. It has been the subject of newspaper articles and we know personally of several horror stories. Our own passports have been in their possession waiting for our visas for about 6 months.” Under normal circumstances our visas should have been completed by the 25th of June, which is the day I am writing this. I have called the PNG embassy in D.C. and the visas are not ready. They would not even give me a time frame for when they would be completed! I was informed to just check back week after week.
My last meeting on this furlough is tonight (June 25th) and then we are ready to return. We were hoping to be back in PNG by mid July. We know the Lord is in control and has a reason for this. Please pray the Lord will intervene and allow our visas to come through. The situation leaves us sort of in a limbo. We will probably make arrangements to head back to Alaska to wait this out. I am also considering scheduling some other meetings as well. We need the Lord’s wisdom and direction. We truly desire to return to PNG ASAP!
Other news
The last three months have been filled with meetings. We truly enjoyed reporting back to our supporting churches on furlough. I have also held meetings in several new churches since mid May. Also please pray about our house in PNG. We received more news that the rats are still wreaking havoc in the house. We have much work to do on the house when we finally do arrive. Missionary Richard Crotts has been a blessing to us by working on our home in PNG. He has even opened his home to my family and I when we do return, until our home is livable. (He is located on the island just south of ours, New Britain.)
The family and I are currently staying at the D and D Missionary Homes in St. Petersburg, Florida. We arrived here on the 5th of May.
