Passports have returned!

 It's getting real! We just received our brand new passports with 1 year visas for our return to ministering in W. Africa!  

Our new passports have quite the story, which I'll bore you with now. When we departed our host country in May to return to the US to give birth to Josh, we knew the US Embassy there was only doing emergency services for expatriates. This did not include passport renewals. We were told this suspension in service was only temporary, but noone knew how long the service would be suspended. Denise and Roy's passports were good for another 18 months, but we didn't think it was a good idea to return to our host country without the assurance that our passports would be valid through our upcoming term. We did not want to risk getting trapped outside of the US! 

By September 2020, the service to renew passports was still suspended. We decided together to go ahead and renew our passports. Expedited service was still unavailable, but routine service of 10-12 weeks was the expected return time for our passports. That put our passports to return around Christmas 2020, which fit our expected timeline to return to the field by Jan 2021. 

We also had to renew Abby's, and we needed to get a new passport for Josh. The kids' passports came in good time (expedited service was available when we renewed).  We had Josh's in our hands before Christmas after sending it off the first week of November.  Denise and Roy continued to wait. The wait continued through the months of January and into February. The end of February marked 24 weeks since we had asked for passport renewals. We were getting worried, frustrated, even desperate to hear anything so that we could return to work. We called National Passport weekly to see if there was anything we could do, why the delay, can we now expedite the service?  Never were they of any help to us. We were left with a quandry: Do we continue to wait for our passports to be returned? It could be any week. Do we ask for our original passports and supporting documents to be returned? By Christmas our host country was back to renewing passports and other routine services for expatriates. 

Finally we did some calling within our mission partners. We were given some good advice to contact one of our state senator's office for assistance. 48 hours after completing the application with our state senator our passports were fully processed and being mailed back to us!  Yay!  

Now we have our visas, our plane tickets, and our totes to pack. This is our week to begin our goodbyes to friends and family. Continue to pray for us as we begin the adjusting process. We anticipate it will be a very trying time for us all as we adjust to the very hot desert climate and non-English speakers. 

Thank you for praying! 

Dedicating Josh

 Who knew that planning a child dedication could be so hard!  Our amazing pastor at Winterville Baptist Church heard our request soon after Josh was born that we wanted to do a child dedication service for him. By the time we felt up for traveling (our church is 100 miles from where we are staying), "the sickness" as we describe covid to Abby, was getting worse and therefore our church was no longer meeting together. It was especially important for Denise to have our church family present for Josh's dedication, so we waited. Our passports were very delayed (next post) so we were able to wait to have this service.  When our church opened its doors again, we planned the big event!  However, covid was not done, and it zapped our pastor for about 2 weeks during the very week that we the dedication service scheduled. We had already made plans to see friends, so rather than cancel those plans we came to Winterville for the weekend and Roy ended up preaching while the pastor was out sick.  That service is here: Testimony of a new believer and God's Soverignty for us all 

It turns out our patience was rewarded as we were able to experience a great dedication service to honor Josh.  We hope you like the service as much as we did.  Here is the video which you can play on youtube:   Josh's Dedication Service

When we take trips, we often make the trip special for Abby. This time was no exception.  We planned to stay the night at a hotel in Greenville. Abby packed her suitcase full of stuffed animals, blankets, and toys! We made sure she packed her extra clothes, too. J  We saw 4! parks during our stay in Greenville. One before the service, 2 the next morning before leaving, and one during our picnic lunch. Abby has become quite the climber so one of us (usually Roy) is always spotting her in case she falls and for when she needs help on the monkey bars. She still wants one of us to push her on swings and tell her stories as she hasn't quite shed her independent shell yet. She enjoys meeting new friends at these parks. We counted 8 cement trucks, 6 slug bugs, 5 railroad crossings, 4 parks, and one bad wreck on the highway that caused a 30 minute delay. Sounds like a song!