Visa Stress

AH!!!!!!!  So our visa's expire on the 20th of this month and we had made arrangements for them to get renewed.  We were to take all of our documents and passports in on the 10th and we were assured that that was enough time to take care of what we need to take care of.  So we went ahead and prepared all of our stuff.  We went into our office desk to set everything out for an early morning departure to get it all turned in and the official folder that holds all of our important documents was gone.  Completely AWOL!  We began furiously looking for it and could not find it anywhere. Considering everything, we stayed pretty calm but we looked in and through everything.  Maybe even twice.  We took every book off of the shelf thinking it might have fallen behind books.  We took out every drawer and even took the back off of a cabinet an anyway, it was not anywhere!  We literally looked from morning until night.  At 9:50 my husband and I decided to call the wai ban who is responsible for turning in our paper work and ask if we could get a visa extension without all of the paperwork and documents that were missing.  Our hope was to buy us enough time to get new documents certified and sent from the U.S. in the extension period.  We had heard that you can get up to a month extension occasionally and we have never needed it so we thought, maybe this is our turn to "need" it.  But upon calling her she apologized and said that she had kept all of those documents the last time we turned it all in and it is in a file cabinet in her office!  I don't know if we wanted to scream or laugh or cry so we sort of did a combination of all 3!  He went and got me a Starbucks decaf coffee to split as a celebration and we went to bed with an extremely organized house and happy hear

Soul Care Weekend 2016

It's hard to believe it is June already. The school year flew by and we ended on a high note with our family soul care weekend to Shan Hai Guan area in China.  We enjoyed time together and especially time to pray and connect as a family.  We are praying especially about some family decisions and hopeful that the Lord will make our next steps very clear.  Abby - 11, Hudson - 8 and Levi - 6. June 2016