visa update!

Just wanted to give a quick (and overdue!) update about our visa situation.

The situation with our visas has been temporarily resolved and for that we are so very grateful!  We originally thought that our visas were going to expire at the end of February.  We are currently in country under a religious worker visa but since our daughter was born here, we can apply for a permanent resident visa, so that was the route we were going. After days and days of collecting documents and hours spent in the Ministry of the Exteriors office, we found out that the background check that we had wouldn’t be accepted and that we would need to file for another one, which was going to take more time than we had.  So, then we decided that we would just try to renew our current visas and work on getting the document that we needed for our permanent residency status.  So, we again gathered a bunch of paperwork and set off to renew our visas.  After hours of waiting, we were able to meet with an official who discovered that our visas had been registered incorrectly when we entered the country last June, and that our current visas would be valid until June of 2017.  Yay!  Not even a resolution that we knew was possible.  Now we will hopefully have enough time to get the needed background check that we need from the USA to be able to apply for our residency visa.

So although the visa saga is not completely over, we are so grateful for the extra time and space to get it figured out.  In the midst of preparing for the NPTS course and having family visit and our kids having time off school and Chris preparing to teach two different intensive courses, trying to do all this visa stuff on top of it all was slightly stressful.  The timing of it all just wasn’t ideal.

Thank you for all of your prayers and support and we will keep you updated on the next steps to come!