Seeds Sprouting

This last weekend was the end of the gardening season for us. Bethany pulled out the remaining tomato and pepper plants from our raised bed. I've finally harvested the last of my cayenne and jalapeno peppers from the balcony. The air has changed from the summer heat to fall's cool winds. School has started, and we are finding our rhythm of life and ministry. But in the middle of all of this, spring is happening again. Things are sprouting and growing.

I remember when we first planted our garden. We tried to start as much as we could from seeds. When you get baby plants from the garden store, there is something tangible from the beginning. It takes a little while before they are established, but the tiny plant is there. It is shows you a piece of what is to come. However, seeds are different. With seeds, it is hard to know where you stand. Seeds require a great deal of patience.

With the initial planting of seeds, it isn't always clear what would happen. Will the seed germinate? Did they put the right seeds in the right packet? Am I going to get hot peppers instead of green peppers from this plant? There is a period of time where you just stare at the ground and water it and hope for the best. Days go by, sometimes a week or more depending on the kind of seed. In this time, all we see on the surface is dirt.

Then suddenly, a small plant emerges out of the ground.

Sometimes, I have felt like our preparation process for this church planting project has been like those days or weeks in between planting and sprouting. We've worked and prayed and sown, and we hope to see that first shoot break through the ground. But we are still in that preparation and waiting process. We're still watering and waiting. But the roots are forming and God is moving. We're seeing growth in our small group (we just agreed to split it into two with regular community gatherings to keep the groups connected). We're seeing growth in our team (another couple from a different organization has joined our team!). We're developing the vision together to reach our target area with the love of Christ and the transforming power of his gospel.

All in all, we believe that it is worth it. We believe we should take C.S. Lewis' "long way around", which is to say, we want to take the hard road. We want to be faithful to see God build His church, in His timing, and to His glory.

I'm not sure how far this metaphor goes. To be honest, I don't know if our first Sunday Service is the point at which the tiny plant first sticks it shoot out to collect sunlight. Sometimes milestones are hard to come by. But we are glad to see the movement and growth, even if most of it is under the surface for now. I think that is where God does some of His most important work in our lives. Not in the huge sweeping changes, but in the small things. 

Let's keep praying diligently for God to move.

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).

Learning to Wait

Waiting is tough. When Nate and I first got married, we waited for a year until we felt it was wise to apply for missionary service, though we were eager to start. Then, we waited to get accepted. Then we spent 18 months raising support, waiting for the day when we would be ready to launch. Now that we are here in Austria, we are waiting to apply for our visas and, eventually, be able to stay here and find a place to live.  It is hard to wait.

No matter our life circumstance, we are always waiting for something. Whether it is the next stage of life, the next stage of ministry, our next competency level in German...we (especially I!) have a tendency to look forward and impatiently wait for the next phase to come. And we have many other people in our life right now that are waiting for important things - friends waiting and hoping to get pregnant, teammates waiting on important documents from the Austrian government, others waiting for acceptance letters...the list goes on. So lately, my thoughts have drifted to the idea of waiting...and what it means to wait well.

I struggle to wait, but I also believe that God does some special things in the hearts of His people when they wait. In times of waiting, we learn to trust in the Lord's timing. We learn to be patient. We are reminded that life is truly not in our control. I depend on God more when I wait then when everything "goes my way" and "according to plan".

Yesterday, we were studying Isaiah 42 in our WorldVenture team prayer time. For centuries, the Israelites were waiting for a savior to come and make things right between God and man. They heard prophesies and waited expectantly for them to be fulfilled. They also waited for the Promised Land, wandering for 40 years in the desert. How much harder must it have been for them to endure these long periods of waiting, sometimes for things that would not come to pass in their lifetime?

As I contemplate the arrival of Christ, the savior of the world, during this Christmas season, I hope I can continue to meditate on the work God is doing in my heart as I wait on Him. May I learn to trust in God's ultimate plan, rather than impatiently demanding my own. God is true to His promises and He sent His Son at just the perfect time. Our plans may not happen in my timing, but they will happen in His.

What are you waiting for? What is God doing in your heart while you wait?


 "Behold my servant, whom I uphold,
    my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my Spirit upon him;
    he will bring forth justice to the nations.
² He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice,
    or make it heard in the street;
³ a bruised reed he will not break,
    and a faintly burning wick he will not quench;
    he will faithfully bring forth justice.
⁴ He will not grow faint or be discouraged
    till he has established justice in the earth;
    and the coastlands wait for his law."

- Isaiah 42:1 - 4



Photo credit: paulabflat from morguefile.com