What a long road it's been....

 

Meeting Beth at the airport after her second stint in Ireland.

It all started during the summer of 2017, when Beth was preparing to join our team here in Vienna. It had been five years since someone new joined Team WorldVenture in Austria, and Nate and I had just stepped into the field leader role. This was also the first time a team member of our would be applying for a "church worker visa" through the Free Church, since the Free Church just became a government-recognized religious group a few years ago. Since receiving that recognition, the church has had the ability for the first time EVER to bring over workers on it's own visas.

So, the field leader role was new, overseeing someone's arrival was new, and the visa process for the Free Church was new. We all had a lot to learn. Most of our information about the visa came from one particular family who had gone before us and received the visa two years earlier. We tried our best to do everything exactly as they had done it, not knowing if rules and laws had changed in the meantime. Beth applied for her visa at an Austrian Embassy in the U.S. and then, without hearing a final answer, came over in October 2017 for her first 90 days on an automatic tourist visa.

The questions started popping up from the immigration office - uncertainties about her income (which was not at it's full level until she arrived in Austria and became a full-time employee), questions about her rental contract (which was not long enough, apparently) and most importantly, questions about our American health insurance coverage. Little did we know, they had been cracking down on health insurance plans that had certain "exceptions to coverage", after an unfortunate incident the year before where someone came to Austria with insufficient insurance and ended up in the hospital. The national health insurance had to foot the bill and they sued the immigration office for letting this person into the country without sufficient coverage. Since then, laws became stricter and were highly enforced.

For several months, we had a back and forth with the immigration office. They asked for more documentation, we tried to provide it. Beth signed a longer term lease and provided more proof of income. We sent in more insurance documents, trying to prove our insurance coverage was sufficient. Then in January, Beth's visa application was suddenly denied without any warning. We were stunned! We had never experienced a denial before, and had through that we would have some warning if we needed to acquire different health insurance.

God blessed us with a friend in our small group who studied law. He was truly a God send. Richard helped us submit an extensive appeal to the decision and then we waited. Beth left Austria for her 90 days out of the Schengen Zone of Europe (required) and went to Ireland to join WorldVenture colleagues there. She returned in late spring, but still no answer on the appeal. She left again in the summer...still no answer. Finally, just before she returned in the fall, the appeals court contacted us and asked for copies of her passport. Then a date was set for a hearing before the judge on December 5th. This was 16 months after her initial application was submitted for a residence permit.

Celebrating the end of a long visa journey

Through all this, there were many ups and downs. The journey was very challenging for Beth, as she had no permanent home and while in Ireland, very few opportunities to serve and have "purpose" there. I was also struggling with a lot of guilt, that perhaps somehow I had made some wrong decisions along the way or wasn't thorough enough during the process. I kept wondering if I could have prevented this whole mess if I had done more research or asked more people how to proceed. But God provided comfort and reassurance that we had made decisions along the way based on what we knew then and there should be no regrets.

On December 5th, with hundreds of people praying (truly - so many people were praying that day!!), God answered our prayers. The judge was not very friendly, but he did decide fairly and in Beth's favor. She was granted the residence permit as of that day. We were so thankful and blown away. She is finally allowed to stay in country and can begin thinking more about her future here.

The official positive decision!

We are so thankful for the prayers for Beth and for us along the way. It's been such a long road, and a huge weight has been lifted. We are confident God has helped us all grow as a result of this experience, and God has already used Beth's challenges to help her understand and connect with the refugees she will serve (who experience an even longer and more difficult immigration journey).

Visas and Health Insurance

The last few months have been a journey, and we thought we give you guys an update. (We apologize for the long blogging hiatus...) I'll do my best to keep the story compact, because I feel like it could get away from me.

Recently, I had heard from some other field leaders and workers here that visas were becoming more complicated. There were questions about health insurance and coverage and needing to provide additional documentation. We knew of people still waiting on their visa renewal applications to be processed, and it seemed like we could also face these challenges. We took a "we'll see" sort of attitude because living in the "land of worry and what-ifs" is not a great place to be.

Last fall, we had our first new worker come to Austria since we have arrived. We were so excited to have her here and get her settled in. She started German classes, found an apartment (something needed for her visa) and started to figure out cross-cultural life. We started to get an idea that things could get complicated when she received a letter asking for more documents. One of the issues mentioned in this letter was about health insurance. Bureaucracy is a regular part of life here, and so gathering documents and submitting them has become a normal part of our life. First, we made sure we were reading the documents correctly, because legal German is a whole other language. After that, we gathered the necessary documents and brought them back to the office.

In the meantime, we also were facing a visa renewal. We now live half a mile from the Vienna city limits, which places us in a different province. We went to drop off our documents at a local office and received similar questions about our health insurance coverage and the need for more documents. We submitted everything and waited for a response from the office. 

Emotional Ups and Downs

As some of you already know, I (Bethany) flew back to Vienna at the beginning of January to renew Ellie's visa. It seems a bit silly and extravagant to fly back for only 3 days just to file paperwork, but we saw no way around it. And in fact, I was pretty excited about the whole thing. I enjoy flying and the thought of travelling on my own without a toddler to entertain sounded very relaxing! I was also excited to spend time with our dog and see some friends. Sounded like a good plan.

Little did I know the trip would be one of the most physically grueling things I've done in a long time. I came down with some sort of weird virus the last day of our Florida trip. It started out as a 5-day low grade fever and then morphed into bad cold symptoms, a headache and general achiness. By the time I boarded the plan to Amsterdam, I was not feeling any better and this did not change throughout my time in Vienna. Jet lag plus sickness made for an exhausting 5 days. It was a big disappointment to me after anticipating this trip for months.

I knew going into the trip that my time there would be emotional. We miss Vienna and our home a lot. We miss our dog, our friends, our church, our routine and speaking German. We are thankful for the opportunity to be back in the States, but it no longer quite feels like home to us and it's difficult to be on the road so much. So it was difficult and emotional to go back to Vienna and get a short taste of home without being able to stay. It was hard to say goodbye to the dog again, knowing he doesn't understand why we've left him for so long. (I know he's less broken up about this than I am, but still...) It was difficult to see friends, only to say goodbye all over again.

In some ways, walking down Vienna's streets also felt oddly normal. Nothing has changed; life still goes on there as it always had. It was home, not some magical place I was visiting. The normalcy was kind of refreshing. But the whole visit also felt like some sort of other-worldly experience that wasn't actually happening.

I filed Ellie's visa paperwork, thankfully still competent enough in German to understand the office personnel. I had an appointment at her pre-school, where she starts in September, did some shopping, met up with friends, and then got back on a plane to head home. By the time I landed in Minneapolis, my head was pounding, I couldn't stop coughing and I couldn't hear out of my left ear. (The customs agent made fun of this, because I had to keep asking him to repeat himself. He thought it was funny...I didn't laugh.) Add that to having just said goodbye to my home again and I was emotional wreck. It was not a fun day.

Things have leveled out now, with the help of antibiotics, sleep and some time to process. I am very thankful, despite the difficulties, for the chance to go back and reconnect with our home city. I'm thankful Ellie got to spend extra quality time with Papa and her grandparents while I was away. I'm thankful we have a home and a dog to go back to in June, a country we've grown to love and a culture and language we've slowly begun to understand. I'm also thankful, though, that this emotional roller coaster of a trip is over and behind me. Just like the rides we rode at Disney World last week, these twists and turns left me feeling a bit jostled and thrown around. Time for a few days of normalcy before the next change happens...

B1 Test (AKA Saturday Morning Adventures)

Today we took the B1 German competency exam at our language school. Here is the explanation of the levels. It went pretty well, and we felt good coming out of it, even though it was a formal test. We won't know how we did for another 10 days or so. Here are some thoughts from today and an explanation of why we decided to take this formal exam.

The first reason we took this test was because we needed it for our visas. I think we have between two and three years to get to this level of German to meet the visa requirement, but we figured that it would be good to get it out of the way while the grammar nuts and bolts were firmly fixed in our heads. This leads into our second reason for taking the test. We wanted to get a bench mark for how far we have progressed in the language. Language learning is something in life that is hard to pin down. Often times you grow and grow and don't really notice the growth that has happened. There aren't that many times that we have something like this to take the pulse of our progress and so we jumped at the opportunity.

Last fall, I wrote about speaking like a child and preparing for our A1 exam. That feels like so long ago and it is amazing to see how we have grown in the last nine months. Like any student studying a subject, the further we go into German, the more we realize how much we have yet to learn. 

Ultimately, language and culture are tools that we use to effectively communicate the gospel cross-culturally. We really love German and Austria, but we are not here just to learn the language and culture. We are here because we have a loving and good God that wants to have a relationship with Austrians in German*. And we believe wholeheartedly that the time we are investing now in language learning will bear fruit in the future as we seek to be a witness to Christ's message and to encourage Austrian believers to do the same.









*I am still blow away at the language diversity on this planet. The fact that communion with God is had through so many different languages and variety of cultures completely astounds me.

A Busy Month!

This month has really been a whirlwind. Here are some of the things we've been up to...

Serious Pictures, Happy Faces

Today is a very exciting day.

Today is the day that we were handed our visa cards to live in Austria.  

Today it is completely legal for us to live here, and we are so excited for God's provision. Today is a day of rejoicing at what God has done on our behalf. But today was also a day where we breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Yesterday, however, was challenging. Yesterday we weren't sure what would happen. Yesterday was a heavy day of stress.

The first reason had more to do with the situation at hand and the importance of our visas being processed. There is a special quality to an experience like this, knowing that it "isn't real until it is real." Even though things had gone along as best as we could hope for up until yesterday, we still hadn't finished the process. We still didn't have the visas in our hands. For me (Nate), this added an undercurrent of stress. Before this trip to Vienna, as we set up meetings to view apartments and evaluated online listings, there was this nagging fear or doubt in the back of my mind, because the visas weren't in our hands. We were doing our best to plan for a future that still wasn't 100% certain.

The second reason yesterday was stressful was a bit more challenging. In our meeting at the visa office Thursday morning, there were new questions being asked and a new document that needed to be provided up before we could receive our visas. As we rushed to find the needed parties and get the signed pieces of paper, there were serious questions about whether or not we would be able to receive our visas or if we would have to wait until next year to start the process again. This is why this morning was so heavy for us...why we walked out of the visa office with so much adrenaline in our veins and our hearts pounding. Because there is always the possibility that they will say, "sorry, you did this wrong" or "you broke that rule and we can't give you the visa." 

These last few days have been a roller coaster of emotions. I think this was a reminder to us that we are not in control, but we serve the One who is. We can think we are in control sometimes, but the reality is that we are only stewards of what we have.

I read a prayer last night I read a prayer from the Valley of Vision. A few of the last lines cut me to the core:

I do not crouch at thy feet as a slave before a tyrant,
but exult before thee as a son with a father.
...
Preserve me from the intoxication that come of prosperity;
Sober me when I am glad with a joy that comes not from thee.
Lead me safely on to the eternal kingdom,
not asking whether the road be rough or smooth.
I request only to see the face of him I love,

That last line caught me most of all. Any time we hold onto something more than our desire for Christ, it needs to be pushed back into its place. The question I asked myself last night, as we wondered what today would look like, was "is Jesus enough? If this dream or desire I have goes on hold or even goes away, is He still enough?" It is a question we all must continually ask and one that is not as easily answered.Even if we know what the answer should be, we need to examine our hearts to see if it's what we truly believe.

Thank you for celebrating with us and praising our great God! Thank you for praying for us! Now on to the next stage...

An Invitation

Yesterday a letter arrived at our colleagues'  house in Austria. It was something that we have been waiting for and planning for for a very long time. A very official letter from the government of Austria. At the top in big bold black letters it said:

"Einladung"

which means "invitation." It said that we were invited to pick up our visas on Valentine's day in Vienna!

To be honest we were shocked! We were very hopeful that this day would come, but we were expecting this to happen in May, or even June. Not February. Our minds have been spinning for the last 24 hours as we have contacted family and team members. We have tried to figure out what this will means for our time here in the UK.

In short, we aren't sure yet. We have some tentative plans in place and we'll tell you more as things come together, but for now

Rejoice!

Your prayers have been answered by a great, powerful, and good God. One who loves to give us good gifts. A God that does not deal with us as our sin would demand, but delights to bring us into communion with himself!

What we do know, is this means is that the road is clear for us to live in Austria and continue our language learning. It also means we get to attend our spring team retreat in Grundelsee (we attended this retreat as appointees on a vision trip in 2011, we get to go back as full fledged team members!). And it means that we are one step closer to an apartment and a bit of stability. It means more stability than just guest bedrooms and vacation rental apartments anyway.

We are so blessed to see God move in this way and so thankful for all of your prayers and support.

Photo credit: dieraecherin from morguefile.com

Surviving the "Visa Overnight of 2013"

Well, we survived! On Tuesday night into Wednesday, we camped outside the visa office and then submitted our applications to the Austrian government. We are relieved it is over!

In the midst of the chaos, there are several things we are thankful for:

• Fellow missionary friends decided to check the office at 7am on Tuesday. There were already people in line! Because of their phone call, we were able to still get a good spot in line.
• The temperature hovered right around freezing. For January, this is pretty mild!
• We had the opportunity to get to know other missionaries during our stint outside.
• Friends of our who live close to the office (and were on vacation) gave us their keys. We had a warm place to go back to as Nate and I took turns out on the street.
•  [From Bethany Only] Nate was gracious and took the overnight shift from midnight - 6am. I was very thankful for his willingness to sacrifice!

It was very important that we were early in line. Believe it or not, the first person in line as a lawyer representing 28 people! With only 60 visas given out, he took almost half of them right away! So even though we were #5 & 6 on the list, we ended up right in the middle of the pack. We were so thankful we got there early!

Thank you for your prayers for us during this time. God was faithful in so many ways. We're glad the ordeal is over. Now it is time to wait and keep praying!

Here are a few photos from the adventure.

Nate looking chipper at the beginning!

A few hours later...a little less chipper.

Trying to stay warm!

Friends rejoicing - someone brought us hot McDonald's!

Our own little "tent city"

One we got inside, they lined us up according to the list.

We're done - we handed in our paperwork and got fingerprinted! Now time to sleep.

Gearing Up for the Big Day!

As many of you know, January 2nd is an important day for us.  

It's the day we apply for our Austrian visas! 

We will begin waiting in line in front of the Visa office on January 1^st (tomorrow) in anticipation of submitting our visa applications the moment the office opens for 2013. We anticipate being outside on the street for at least 18 hours. It is crucial that we are one of the first 60 people to get in line, and that is why we are willing to wait outside for so long. We must get a good spot in line in order to stay in Austria!

We are gearing up for our "big night" with some important supplies...

Over 100 pages ready to submit as our complete visa application!

 A full bag of snacks and goodies!

Hand warmers - a "must" (for me, at least...Nate is a furnace!)

Four sleeping bags and 2 camping chairs, borrowed from teammates

Thick socks and warm clothes

I'm ready to jump in and begin this crazy on-the-street adventure!

If you think of it, please pray for us during this time (We will be waiting to apply from approximately 8am ET on January 1 to 2am ET on January 2): 

• Pray for stamina as we wait outside overnight
• Pray that we would line up early enough to be two of the first 60 people to submit applications
• Pray for favor in the eyes of the Austrian government
• Pray that we would receive our visas in a timely fashion, at least by the end of June. Pray that we would be surprised by receiving them early!

 P.S. If you're reading this and you live in Vienna, come visit us! The office address is Dresdner Straße 93, 1200 Wien.  

We Passed!

At the end of November, we took a "ground level" German exam. Although we were told the test would not be too difficult, we were still nervous! If we didn't pass the test, we could not stay in Austria! A passing score was required for our visa application.

And yesterday, we received the official word...we passed with flying colors!

We both got high marks on our tests and received formal paper certificates AND plastic cards to go in our wallets! (Not sure what to use these for yet...).

Praise God for a huge answer to prayer!