In order to apply for your visas, you need a sponsor here in South Africa. They basically write a letter saying that they have invited you to be here in South Africa and that you are volunteering, etc, etc. In addition to needing this, there is also something called a repatriation fee. This fee is money that you are supposed to pay to the South African government for them to hold in case they need to send you home for any reason. Death or deportation being the top two. Upon leaving the country you get the money back (2-3 months later). When we got our visas in the states before coming all we had to do was prove we had enough money in the bank to buy a plane ticket. So, in addition to our sponsor letter, we also had the group we are working with write a letter saying that they would take care of any cost associated with getting us home for any reason.
Because of some issues with Finley's paperwork and knowing how difficult Home Affairs can be, here in South Africa, we choose to go thru a visa agent. It's comes with a small fee, but there is an agent with you every step of the way. Our agent warned us that she was not sure our letter for the repatriation fee would work, but she had gotten one processed before.
All Nations had agreed to write both letters for us. We serve with them now in Ocean View and they had invited us to work with them for the next 3 years. There was one small string attached. We would have to attend their five months CPX (very similar to YWAM DTS). At CPX core, it is a church planting and disciple making training course with 3 months of classroom and 2 months of outreach. It was difficult for me to imagine after 3 years, now stopping to go thru a training course. I fought it. I met with one of the guys who helps run the course and he told me that I would have to clear my calendar for 5 months. Including stepping out of leadership at the church that I was currently serving in. All Nations teaches a "simple" or "house" church model and they want you to both learn that model and participate in one while you are going through the course. Now I was fighting even more.
I met with my pastor to discuss what was happening. He was disappointed at the fact that we might be leaving. In the end, the church also offered to sponsor our visas. Only so that there was a choice and we were not forced to make a decision based on lack of options.
So that's the backdrop leading up to our first meeting with home affairs. Because of some issues we had with Finley's paperwork (all straightened out now) and some closings at home affairs, we were schedule to go there the day that our visas expired.
That morning we head downtown. Meet our agent and go over everything one last time. We deal with a few final things for Finley and leave our applications with our agent to deliver to Home Affairs for us. Andrea and I stop for a quick lunch while we were downtown. Celebrating, after all, our visas were done, right? WRONG. We get a phone call from our agent. She tells us that they will not accept our visas with the repatriation letter that we included. Uh-Oh. Big problem. We tell her we will go there and meet her and discuss with the Home Affairs person.
Nothing was working. There was no way around this law according to the supervisor lady that we were speaking with. She said the only way she could accept the applications was with the repatriation fee. For our family it was over R100,000 ($10,000). Needless to say we didn't have it and there was nothing she could do or would do to work with us. We sat down, asking God for our miracle or just to tell us if it was time to pack up and go. I made a few phone calls. Praying someone I knew had some pull at Home Affairs and could help us out. Nothing! Someone said to call someone else on our Ocean View team. A YWAM'er. He tells me that YWAM has a deal with the South African Government that exempts their volunteers from paying the fee. He goes on to tell me that All Nations and YWAM have a great working relationship and that they will write those letters for people from All Nations. He gives me the # to call. I speak with the secretary at YWAM. Tell her our story and she says that she can write the letter. It's now 1:30. I speak to the home affairs letter and she confirms that the YWAM letter will exempt me from the fee. Problem is I need the original letter and I have to be back by 3:30. Its close, but we run out the door, heading to get our letter. Knowing the office was about 45-60 mins away, I knew I had just enough time. The letter had to be ready because with traffic it would be very close. I called our agent and asked her to fax all our info to this lady so she could get the letters ready for us when we got there. We get there at 2:30, plenty of time to make the turn and be back on time. Andrea runs in and runs out, but the letters aren't ready. The fax never went through. I go inside. The base director tells me that he is also trying to confirm that we are working with All Nations. The guy who I had spoken to about sponsoring us with All Nations was out of the country. The guy that heads up my team in Ocean View was also not answering. The couple of people that he did talk to had no idea who I was. Because I submitted my visas with the letter from the church I didn't even have the All Nations letter on me. I quickly phone Brie and told her where to find the letter. Send me a picture so I can prove to them we will be working with All Nations. All the while my agent is calling telling me I have to be there by four or it doesn't matter. 3:00 tick tick tick, 3:30 tick tick tick, 4:00 we finally get our signed original letter. I call back the agent. I have it, now what? She was talking to home affairs. They accepted our applications with the stipulation that I would bring in the original letter Monday Morning.
So what does this mean. This means we will be working with All Nations and we have agreed to take the next CPX course which starts Feb 2014. Even though the Visa applications were accepted, this doesn't mean that we have our new visas. We have only submitted them, which just means we had everything on the check list and turned it all in to Home Affairs. Now I've been told this can take months and sometimes even years, but now that they are accepted and we have our receipt of this, we are all legal to be here.
As the time has passed for all of this to settle in, we are getting more and more excited about the CPX course. What we had fought is something now we really feel we need to do. Sometimes (often), I find that I will fight against something only to find it was God's plan for us all along. God had already put a desire in my heart to learn more about church planting. Although there were other options to help me scratch this itch so speak, this apparently was all part of God's plan. God had also given me a pretty specific word, on more than one occasion, regarding the Country Jordan. The founder of All Nations just returned from a 4 week trip to the Middle East and said that there is a small window of opportunity for the church to be involved in what's happening in Syria and that All Nations will be directing their efforts there to both Lebanon and Jordan to help with the refugee crisis starting in 2014.
We have no plans to leave where we are in South Africa. This will be our home base and hopefully the plan will be to make a few trips there starting next year. According to the Director at All Nations there is a thing called a non-resident church planter where you find a local person and begin to pour into that person, making several trips to go and encourage and bring supplies as well as corresponding while you are away. This is very similar to what you see in the Book of Acts and Paul's missionary journey's.
It could just be a one time thing, although I don't think so. I feel like for now I need to at least be obedient and make the trip and I believe the rest will unveil itself in time. So, to that end, I will be going on a small 6-8 man team to Al Mafraq, Jordan come January next year. Al Mafraq is home to the second largest refugee camp in the world. We will be working with some All Nations and YWAM people who are already on the ground in Jordan. We will be strengthening relationships and laying the ground work to send more teams from South Africa as well as Stateside. I will post another blog about our "Serve Syria" project so that you can know how to get more information and how to pray.
For the meantime, we will continue to keep working with the All Nations Ocean View team, our heart is here. I love what we are doing in Ocean View. We have been in communication with our Church and will continue to work with them through the end of this year and look forward to possibly returning at the end of CPX. Our call is still the same, to serve the Least, the Last and the Lost! How amazing that God could use us to do that here in South Africa and also in Jordan. We are very aware of the Lord's presence in all of this process. Even though there have been obstacles, He has stood for us and in that we find great peace in the direction we are going.
Prayer Points
- The Visa Process, that we get our renewed Visas back shortly
- Serve Syria
- Everything that needs to happen around CPX (funding, paperwork, etc.)
- January trip to Al Mafraq. This will just be Shelby and few others from All Nation
- Our need for monthly support and a 2nd car that Andrea can drive
Shelby
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