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Summer 2017

Here we are a the end of Summer 2017. It has been a full summer for us, and we hope it has been for you too.

Zooming along chinese roads chinese style!

We traveled this summer to a small village 18 hours north of us to visit a student of Shane’s, and her family. It was an arduous journey with many police checks along the way. At each one Michelle and I had to register at that station, and then stand side by side holding up our passports with the ID page visible so the police could take a picture. However, it was worth it once we arrived at the student’s home. Her family was initially nervous because they had never met, nor hosted, foreigners before, much less ones who spoke their language – Kazak. But it was a good time. Liberty and Van especially loved roaming around the property with the younger siblings and checking out the animals such as chickens, chicks, cats, dogs, geese, goats, sheep, and a sleeping guard dog. One highlight was driving for about 3 hours towards the border of Kazakstan in order to watch a 20 km horse race, and the riders were mostly boys aged 10-15.

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The racetrack

Speaking of Kazakstan, we finally made a trip over the border to visit Almaty. You may recall me spending summers there from 1997-2002. There is now no need for a visa for many nations, so we were glad to skip the lengthy visa application process and simply show up at the border! Previous years required the better part of a day to get out of China, and into Kazakstan. This time we were through both sides in…. 1.5 hours. Unbelievable how much more smooth the process is now. While in Almaty Liberty could visit her best friend from earlier Urumqi days.

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We stayed in an AirBnB residence beside a giant mall. Inside this giant mall was a Starbucks and a McDonalds. Now, you can choose to go to these places anytime you want, but for us, it was an amazing experience. The province we live in has had no familiar business like these for years. So it was a treat to order a Grande Bold, in Kazak, as well as Big Mac, in Kazak. It was dizzying really.

On the bus to the border

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Liberty and Van had a great summer, grateful for a break from home school. We all went on many bike rides around the city. Probably one of our favourite memories of this season will be of riding around dinner time (5ish pm) and then stopping for our evening meal at a restaurant, eating a meal, then continuing the bike ride as the sun slowly sets and the street lights come on. Ili is actually fairly bike-friendly, so there are many streets where we can ride on bike lanes. There are still people to dodge, and e-bikes zipping around, but overall it is a safe and fun type of outing. There is also a pond full of goldfish, a turtle, frogs, and it is a fun place to play around. Van also learned how to rollerblade, and Liberty got better at it.

The Pond

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BBQ on the riverbank

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The dance continues

On Thursday on November 26 (American Thanksgiving Day), with happy hearts, Van, Liberty, Michelle and I headed to Toronto to apply for our visas. We had all the original documents we needed, or so we thought. (Cue sad music)

Once there the front desk clerk told us that there is still one missing piece of paper, a Letter of Invitation (LOI) from a new government office. We managed to get up to a visa clerk’s desk and get some answers to questions we did ask, and some we did not even know to ask.

The first interesting tidbit is that the missing LOI should have been issued with the all-important Work Permit. Praise God, we do have the Work Permit (which tells us Shane is approved by the highest levels of government). But, the cleck emphasized that there is no way to have a Work Permit without the corresponding LOI. Where then is this LOI? The clerk figures that the school officials simply forgot to include this LOI when they mailed us the other originals.

Why would they forget this? Turns out it is a new requirement. So new in fact that another Canadian friend of ours have a similar delay in Sept for several weeks, and she is even connected to the best state school in the province. If they did not know, then the small school in the small town we are headed too can be forgiven for not knowing either. (*note: another friend also just wrote us to say they too had an issue with the same LOI with their school.)

Additionally, the official at the school we are going to is new (3 years); the school has not hired a Canadian in over 5 years; and there have been several rule changes the past few years anyway.

All this to say, it is now a matter of the school finding that missing LOI and posting it to us. Whether they use the slow method like last time (3 weeks!) or a faster method remains to be seen. We have asked them, of course, to use a faster method.

Please pray then that they find the LOI and post it to us soon. We hope they haven’t lost it which would mean more time is needed to get the Work Permit and corresponding LOI re-issued. Plus, we are quickly coming to a point in time where the schools will start to shut down for the holidays in January, so we need to be there in December. We need to be there in December because registering with the police can take a couple weeks, and we need to have that finished within 4 weeks of our arrival in the country.

Thank you for your prayers! Thank you for standing with us, and believing God has great things in store for the city to which we are headed.

UPDATE: We did hear from a school official whose title is Waiban (pronounced Why-Bahn) and she told us they are working on it. Her choice of words makes us wonder… the LOI should be there, it was issued with the Work Permit, so what are they “working on”?sad

Papers

Just a few days ago the app we have been using to track our paperwork from China to here lit up with a notification! Eagerly we opened it up to see the update…. the paperwork is now in Canada. Closer than ever.

Ok, so the papers are not in our hands yet, and we still worry that the officials left out one or two important documents, BUT, when the app’s last update was 5 days old we wondered if the papers had been lost in transit. So this new update showing us they are in Canada is a huge relief.

They must have taken a boat.update

A life

There is an emotion we experience from time to time: Woe is me! Particularly these days as we wait for the paperwork and visa, initially with some uncertainty, certainly with faith, and now with anticipation. Many friends have had kind words for us, encouraging us to enjoy these extra days we have in Canada. I do not feel I am in a position to say that God held us back in order of us to be able to attend Michelle’s grandmother’s funeral. But I am glad we were still here so that we could do that. If God has some specific purpose for this delay I think it could very well be for something about which we may have no awareness. Some conversation with someone that would not have happened if we had left August 20. Some act of service or gift to someone we would not have been able to do if we were not here. More family time. More McDonalds or Tim Hortons time.

I am almost of the opinion that trying to figure what His purpose is behind some situation may simply be counter-productive. It sure can add to stress in your life as you wonder and fret, “Was this the reason? Did I miss it last night at that meeting?”

The couple in the photograph, as far as I can tell based on what I know about China, likely have done this job for decades, and will continue to this job for decades: Gather papers and other items which can sold (in these modern times, recycled). My Western eyes see a life’s possibilities wasted. No travel. No education. No broad impact on the world around them. But these people are also quite likely Christians! There are estimated to be 100 million Chinese Christians in China (that is, Han Chinese specifically, not counting other ethnicities such as Kazak or Uyghur or Dongshan, i.e.). Wondering if they are Christians brings to mind Colossians 3:17 (NIV):

And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

This verse has been what is in my mind these days. I pray it be so for you too.

Couple

Holding our breath

You may recall that the school official told us that the paperwork would not be ready before October. Here it is, October, and we are in the days during which we are expecting to  get our paperwork. It has been a strange delay. Just this night Liberty said, “This is hard, waiting.” We agree.

So please pray that sometime in the next few days we get our paperwork with which we then can apply for our visa.