Visas!

Good News at long last: our permanent Ecuadorian Visas have been placed into our US Passports, and have been delivered to our law firm in Cuenca, where Merci faithfully expedited their delivery to us here in the USA via DHL Express Courier.  That was last afternoon, by the way.

PRAISE GOD!  !GRACIAS DIOS! 

At the moment, our Passports/Visas are processed at Panama City, Panama awaiting their next flight north to the USA according to the DHL tracking data.  Arrival to us here in Southern California is expected, according to DHL, to be end of the day this coming Tuesday, October 6th.  Our previous experience with DHL - sending these very same Passports *to* Ecuador from the United States was that delivery takes ~72 hours, excluding Saturdays and Sundays.  So it's quite possible to have received them by late afternoon Monday the 5th.  Either way, we're quite happy about it all!  You could say energized and jazzed, and you'd be right!

The temptation here is to call up United Airlines and make those flight reservations today.  Again, as we have so well learned from our previous experience written in previous posts here, it's best to have physical possession first of these critically important documents.  A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, indeed!  We'll wait, and be patient in it.  We've come this far, right?  What's a few days more, anyways? 

*THANK YOU* one and all, near and far, who have loved us and prayed for us in this long quest to obtain our permanent Residence Visas.  We appreciate you more than words can express. 

This is likely my last post Stateside until we arrive home to Cuenca and our home there in Ecuador.  FYI.  Once returned back to our usual residence there, we anticipate visiting Coloaustro, our law firm in Cuenca and working with Merci to obtain our Cedulas, or National Identification cards that the Ecuadorian Government issues to all permanent residents.  Those will - mercifully - take far less effort and time than the Visas did, and should take no more than two week's time from all accounts I'm aware of.

As I mentioned in a previous post, you cannot fly out of Ecuador without a Cedula card when you have in your Passport an Indefinite Residence Visa from Ecuador.  The official documents have to agree with one another.  That makes perfect sense when one reflects on the matter, of course.

We will, of course, commence with the work God has laid on our hearts to do with the Ecuadorian people.  Carolyn Anne will once again - in full health, btw - volunteer at Clinica Hogar in El Centro, the Historical Center of Cuenca in her capacity as a Registered Nurse, doing whatever needs doing at the moment, cheerfully and with a smile on her lips and a song in her heart. . . and a hug and a prayer to share. 

I, meanwhile, will start teaching three young female charges from our church there in Cuenca, Iglesia Verbo Cristiana, English as a Foreign Language.  New territory for me in a way, but not really, as I have been teaching Latino/a students in California for many years and will even be teaching from the same series of books I taught English for years in the Golden State.  So I will be teaching from very familiar material, instructional material called High Point.  The books cost me - shipping included while Stateside - around $200.  Still couldn't find one of the Teacher's Editions while here in California, but have all the rest of the materials save cassettes and CDs/DVDs and overhead transparencies.  I think I can make a go of it with the Lord's help, of course. 

Come January, 2016 I look to join the faculty as a profesor on staff of The Arco Language Institute, a ministry of Iglesia Verbo in Cuenca.  At that point I will be rather occupied teaching the three girls privately, as well as teaching adults for Arco.  But this is what we signed up for when we visited Cuenca last year, right?  Right!  (smile)

There's more besides these opportunities, of course.  God wants us to be yielded and pliable with soft hearts to do His important work as we seek to present Him well to the Cuencanos and Cuencanas amongst us. 

Please pray that we don't lose too much of our Spanish speaking abilities, too.  We have been practicing our Duolingo self paced instruction daily via the Internet, and I have been speaking Spanish wherever the opportunity lends itself, just to stay in practice.  Carolyn Anne also has been speaking the language as she has opportunity, which is even more helpful for her, being a newer learner of Spanish.  She is making definite headway, and needs the regular practice - while immersed in it in Cuenca.  Can't wait to go back for more!