A week of God sightings and Goodbyes

Again God is showing Himself faithful! As we/I stress about how we are going to get our visas and get into Jamaica, this week is a time of Awesome God sightings.
So far the scenario that needs to happen is that my work visa needs to be finalized(we got news today that it is ready!!!). Next it needs to be picked up tomorrow(Tuesday) in Kingston and sent overnight to us here in Texas so we can have the original paperwork and take it to the consulate in Houston on Thursday and get the rest of the family a visa. As you see if we don't have our visas when we leave on Sunday Oct. 3 then we will have to return to the states within 90 days. Doesn't sound like such a bad deal but the cost for our family to return would be around $3000.00. So after we get the paperwork on Wed. we already have an appointment with the Jamaican consulate in Houston on Thurs at 11:00 AM. They are only open Mon,Tues and Thurs from 9:15-noon, so this will have to happen on Thursday since we leave on Sunday. Our desperate prayer to God this week is that all of this process would take place, the visas would be granted and we would be able to arrive in Jamaica with our visas in hand.

Through this process I am personally having a hard time saying goodbyes because I will be coming back to Texas in November to load and ship our container and prepare our house to sale. The emotions of the family have been up and down, strongly desiring to get to Jamaica but not wanting to leave our family and friends. Through all of this I have been so encouraged by Erin's desire to give our prayer cards to everyone and share with them about what we are going to do in Jamaica. Even tonight at BSF when I went to pick her up from class she ran over to me asking for more prayer cards to pass out in her class. I thank God for children, they sure help me to stay focused on God.

So as you see we have a lot going on this week with our emotions, packing, paperwork and we have so many friends and family we still want to see and say our goodbyes to.
I'm so glad that God is in charge of the details, I know I sure couldn't do it without Him.
-Jeffrey

News......

We sent an email today letting everyone know that we have set a date to depart for Jamaica. This doesn't mean our work permit has been approved. I received and email from Nicholas this afternoon asking that we talk on the phone about some developments with our work permit. I called him and he told me of his conversation with the Ministry of Labour today. The gentleman that he spoke with told him they couldn't find our paperwork(again). After much conversation and being very upset Nicholas was put on hold for over 15 minutes while the man looked again for the paperwork. He returned to the phone to tell him that he had found it and it had not been in the process(as they had told us) it had just been sitting on someones desk since July 29th. The man apologized and said he would personally take it where it needed to go and asked Nicholas to call back this Friday. Nicholas told him that we would be coming down in October and need it before we come down.
Some of the situations we are dealing with at this point is, we are looking at going to Jamaica in October only to return in November to wrap up the final details of the Visas here in the US and load/ship container. Then we will return to Jamaica in December. We can't travel on a one way ticket without the work permit/visas, we would need to have round trip tickets. We can't schedule and load a container without the work permit/visas. We are praying through this and stepping out in faith that God will provide for all of these situations.

TIME TO GO!!!

The news we received last Tuesday and Friday from our contact in Jamaica was the same news as previous weeks(still being processed, call back). We have been praying and seeking council on what we are to be doing. The ups and downs of this process are taking a toll on our family. It seems that our children's excitement to move(from 5 months ago of when we started the application process) is diminishing. Jodi and I were struggling not knowing when we will be moving and how do we work our lives. Alot of worries that we have to turn over to God. So last Tuesday Jodi called me to let me know that after praying that morning, she now knows what we need to do! I was excited and she proceeded to tell me that we need to set our move date and that God would provide the work permit. As when we decided(God told us to) to sale our business and he provided a means for that to happen and while we were raising our support team, many did not join until we made the effort to share our vision.
For me this was great news but I was thoroughly confused because this doesn't seem logical in my mind. How do we plan anything without our work permit??? We can't ship our container, sale our house or cars, get visas for the rest of the family, etc. I told her I would pray about it. After much prayer and counseling, the next day I told Jodi we needed to sit down and set a date. We now have tickets to fly to Jamaica on October 3rd. PRAISE GOD!!! At this time, there are many questions we have and I'm sure you have but only God knows the answers and as we trust God for answers we know he will provide.

New Life !!

I have the privileged to announce to the world that last week our girl Erin prayed to accept Christ in her heart. She has been contemplating this for several weeks. We talked about it several times and she said she wasn't ready. After hearing several question she voiced, I realized that her fear was that she was going to have to get up in front of the church and speak to be baptized after she prayed to accepted Christ. I assured her that she would need to be baptized but the most importantly at this time she needed to pray. She was OK with that and wanted to pray, so I had the privilege to lead her in the prayer.