We have some dear friends who live near San Francisco, who hand delivered our Visa Applications today at the Chinese Consulate. We ran into a snag, as Brad's "occupation" caused a red flag to go up, and they will not process our visa application until we have Travel Acceptance. Normally, you can go ahead and apply for a visa under "tourism" and have the visa ready to go by travel acceptance, so that you don't have anything else to wait on to go. Because we listed "tourism" as our reason for travel, and because Brad is a pastor, the lady processing our paperwork refused to grant us a visa, even after we submitted letters stating that we will abide by all Chinese laws. So, once we get our travel acceptance, we can apply for our visa's again. We are so thankful that our friend, who is very knowledgeable about international travel, was able to be there when all this went down. He was able to gather all of our paperwork and passports and take them safely back to his home. Our agency has NEVER had this happen before, so it caused us some concern, but we know that God is in control and hopefully our visa's will be issued quickly once we get our TA!
We've had a busy December, like everyone else, so the blog has been quiet! Here's a few pics to update you.
Allyson had her Pre-K Christmas Program.... she kind of LOVES to sing!
We made a trip across the mountain to visit my grandmother's before Christmas.
Allyson has been helping me alot in the kitchen..... here's her first experience at doing dishes! (She didn't learn this face from me while doing dishes!)
We had the JOY of having one of our Host Students from 2007/2008 come and visit us for a few days!
Santa came to visit!
I plan to post our Christmas letter on here in a couple of days, but we pray that you have a Merry Christmas!
WooooHoooo!! :) It won't be long now. Praying for DIVINE favor and quick processing of your VISAs once you have your TA. Oh happy day!!! I would say this makes for a MERRY CHRISTMAS! <><
ReplyDelete...and what a blessed New Year it is sure to be for your beautiful family! God bless!!
~ Tanya
Very good likelihood that we will be meeting in China! I had an unfortunate conversation with our agency today. Hoping she was just having a bad day, but it left a bad feeling in my gut.
ReplyDeleteMost likely we will either travel January 14th and if not then no one can travel until Feb 11th and we would have to make that date or we will have to do a restudy for our homestudy and get an extension on our fingerprints. Which would probably put us into March.
Hope to see you in China in JANUARY!!!