miracle

LOI and an open door

The Letter of Invitation Came!

We have amazing and surprising news. Remember way back in October/November 2015 when we were trying to get our paperwork to get a visa to go to Ili on a Teacher visa? The paperwork in its entirety did not come, and we stopped hearing from the school official. So, in December 2015, after some time of waiting, we decided to move on and opted to go to Chiang Mai as a first step back to China. We honestly did not expect to hear from that school ever again. We even shared some suggestions as to what was behind their strange behaviour: some underling lost the paperwork; the other foreigners were kicked out in January so maybe higher-ups did not want more foreigners there; the current single English teacher had volunteered to cover my classes, prompting the school to think, “Hey, we have one guy doing two classes worth… why pay for the second teacher? Anyway, the possibilities could be endless.

Out of the blue on Friday, Feb 26, I checked email

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to discover she had emailed me the last, missing, elusive Letter of Invitation. WHAT?!?! We wrote a quick response acknowledging her email and asked her when she hoped to see us. “As soon as possible” was her reply. According to her another office had delayed this Letter for 2 months, and she only just recently acquired it. The document clearly has a date of issue of December 2015, and a school stamp of early January (so why were we being told in late February?) We emailed it to a Canadian visa company who has helped us before with China visas to see if they could confirm that this was indeed the correct Letter. They responded ‘yes, it is’.

So, it seems the door has been opened for us. We need specific prayers.

Timing is everything. These Letter of Invitations indicate in which country the application will apply. Ours reads, ‘Canada’. Except we are not in Canada. Just the other morning I tried to apply for the visas in Chiang Mai, and this Consulate was ready to accept the applications without seeing the originals (printouts suffice), but then they noticed our LOI says, ‘Canada’, so they told us they can not process it here. We then told the school that, just as with the Work Permit, they would need to mail us the original Letter of Invitation to Canada.

The challenge then is getting the school to send the original LOI to the visa company that will help us (because we are not going to fly all the way back!!) in a speedy manner. The last time they sent the original Work Permit it took 3 weeks. The school has said that classes are basically starting now, so we can’t afford 3 weeks. Neither can they really. And this morning we did in fact get an email from the school official telling us they mailed the LOI (but did not provide a tracking number nor confirmation that they sent to the visa company in Vancouver and not to our home address). And though it is out of our hands as to how quickly the school opts to send this last original, the speed at which we can get our visa may affect the school’s willingness to keep this door open. I know, I know, this is beyond our control, and really a situation created in part by the school, and in part by the slow office somewhere in Urumqi. But the way these things go in China, the ball is now in our hands and we have to somehow make it work, and work quickly, even though the previous delays were not our doing.

Please pray this LOI gets to Canada, preferably to the visa company who is waiting for it, soon.

Pray also that our own passports and other documentation will make it to the same visa company safely. We will only send our paperwork when we have a tracking number from the school to confirm that they have indeed sent the LOI, and in fact we are only going to mail our paperwork once the LOI tracking indicates it has left Asia.

Pray that we find some grace with our apartment rental. We signed a 6-month contract, and it stipulated that we lose 2 months rent if we break the contract early. Well, at the time we thought this was entirely unlikely! 

Please pray also as we begin to prepare the kids for the move. They still most definitely want to go back to China, but they have just settled into Chiang Mai, enjoy their routine here, and importantly for Liberty, have made some friends. They don’t relish another good-bye.

on our way... maybe?

Friends

Overseas we often experience some very cool encounters. You may have heard me tell of some. For example, one day I woke up with this one Kazak guy I had met years and years ago on my mind. But how would I ever find him? I met him during my first time overseas, and here I was in my third term, married, in a different part of the city doing something completely different. Well, I prayed God would do something, and then went out.

It was to the bank I had to go for rent was due. This means we use the ATM to withdraw renminbi. On this particular day I decided to try a new bank near our home, thinking it might save me some time. I stuck my Canadian debit card in, punched in the pin, waited…. and realized the machine had taken my card! Argh! What was hoped to be a time-saver was now turning into something I thought would suck the rest of my day out of my hands.

I managed to pray, calm down, and tried to call the number on the ATM sign but of course no one answered. Usually it is no use to go into the branch because everyone there will hum and haw and claim to not know what to do. But I felt compelled to try. In I went, saw the usual stiffening of everyone’s spines as they spy a real live foreigner walk in, and I head towards the most managerial looking person I can find. They can’t escape. I pull out another card, and with miming motions indicate that their ATM took my card and could I have it back. They reply, as far as my Chinese can discern, that they need their manager to check for me. Ok. I wait.

A few minutes later out of the office walks the very same Kazak guy about whom I had been thinking about that morning. The same Kazak guy who I thought for sure I would never be able to find. I didn’t even remember his home town. Him. Here. Right in front of me. And if I was surprised, you can imagine how shocked he was because he also had woken up that morning wondering if he’d ever see his old Canadian friend again. As great as it was that I did actually get my ATM card back, thanks to him, it was even more amazing to reconnect with him. God. Did. It.

But you know what is weird. in 20 years I have only ever bumped into an old school friend from Canada, in Canada, once or twice. Being back in Hamilton now, and driving around, going here and there, I would expect I would bump into some of my elementary, or high school, or uni friends. But nope. This only happens overseas. With Kazaks, and the odd Chinese, Mongol or Uighur.