The Rest of the Story
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| After a bad day at the consulate, God used this beautiful sky to remind us that He is always in control. |
So I am sure most everyone has heard that our visa trip to Krakow, Poland was most eventful. I am also sure most of you are confused about exactly what happened and why it was significant. I will try to explain. But, I will start with the conclusion for those of you who don't want to read the whole story.
A lot of people have recently asked us why we stay in Ukraine. And to be honest, I didn't really have an answer until today. Today, we went out to meet some other people from church for our regular ministry to the poor. (Every two weeks we pass out small bags of groceries to people we meet begging on the street).As we walked into the parking lot where we meet, one of the older ladies from church exclaimed "our Ukrainians have returned!" She then went on to say how she prayed for us and how grateful she was that we came to Ukraine. We left the parking lot and headed off to pass out our food packages. Our first stop was to visit a lady named Vera. She always calls us her "golden children" and tells us stories about her days as a nurse in WWII. Next, we came across a man we hadn't met before. We gave him the food and told him God loved him. He thanked us and gave me a big kiss on the cheek. Our last stop was to visit a man named Misha. We have been talking to Misha and his wife for several months now and they have been to church a few times. As we leaving them today, they both talked about how they were looking forward to being at church tomorrow.
Probably none of these things sound that fantastic in the grand scheme of life, but to me today they were gifts from God. In Matthew 25, the disciples ask Jesus, "Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?"and he replies "Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.". In my heart, I know that each person we meet on the street represents God. I may not be able to effect much change in their physical lives but I can point them to the one who can change their eternity. So, yeah, that's why I'm here.
OK, The Krakow Adventure:
To live in Ukraine for more than 90 days a year we must have a visa. We must leave Ukraine to apply for visas. So we went to the nearest Ukrainian Consulate in Krakow,Poland. Ukrainian visa laws changed in September ( a yearly event) and in October the application fees for Americans tripled. Apparently, the workers at the Krakow consulate didn't get that information and several Baptist missionaries were charged the normal price. At some point the mistake was found out and the missing funds needed to be replaced. So, the consulate decided to hold all Baptist missionaries responsible. We were aware of the problem and thought that it was being taken care of. We took our documents to the Consulate on Monday morning. The consulate worker looked at out documents and said "you are supposed to pay for someone else". I told him the money was being wired and he seemed satisfied. He gave us forms to take to the bank so we could pay our non-refundable fees. We went across town to the bank, only to find out they were out of cash. So, we had to wait for them to refill the ATM before we could pay. The consulate only accepts applications until 12pm. By the time we finished at the bank it was 11:55am. We returned on Tuesday and handed in our passports. The worker asked "are you submitting your applications?". I replied "yes". Then he went into some big story about how there was a problem and unless the problem was solved by Monday we wouldn't get visas. So I asked for our passports and money back. He refused and kept talking about the "problem". I asked him to explain "the problem" but he refused. I knew "the problem" was that the missing money was going to be deducted from his paycheck if he didn't collect it somewhere else. I asked to speak to the head consulate and he refused to let me. He refused to answer any questions with a straight answer. I told him that I knew about his mistake. At that point, he lost his ability to speak English and just walked away leaving several other people standing in the lobby.
Our biggest fear at this point was that he would just hide our applications and passports in drawer somewhere until Monday and then say our visas were denied. We had already paid $1500 so there was no way we could afford not to get visas. We returned to our hotel where Chelsey called the American Consulate for help. We really didn't expect them to be able to help. The situation was a serious crisis for us but not an international incident. The American consulate worker listened to the story and offered to see if he could do anything. The next morning Chelsey received an email from the chief consulate saying he had spoken to his Ukrainian counterpart and that there should be no problem with picking up our passports and visas. Tim called the Ukrainian consulate and was told to come on Thursday. The Ukrainian Consulate is normally closed on Thursdays but Tim was assured someone would be there to process our visas. So, Thursday morning we went back to the consulate and were greeted by the same man that had caused us so much grief two days before. He stamped our visas and gave us the apology he was obviously commanded to give.We were able to leave for Ukraine that night and returned home Friday morning.
Please read Chelsey's blog to learn about the spiritual lessons we learned during this experience.
The next step---turning our visas into residency permits but tha's a headache for another day.
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