Still In Poland

That's the bad news. We're still here. The good news is we have a backup plan in the works.

Visa laws in Ukraine changed about three months ago. On December 25th (of all days) they will change again. Earlier this week, the Ukrainian government decided to inform us that they will not do anything for our visas until the new law passes. We had done everything they asked. My girlfriend and two of our church pastors had spent two weeks running around collecting the documents they had requested and then the government decided to disregard it all. They will not even give new information about how we will need to change the documents that we will submit under the new law.

So basically, there has been a three or four week window in which it has been impossible to apply for a religious visa. We submitted documents at the beginning of the month and nothing has come of it. At this point, we are back to square one, just waiting to find out what documents they will want us to submit once they're willing to start processing stuff again. And it is really difficult to say how long it will take them to sort things out with the new law and decide how to deal with things. When the law changed a few months ago, the first month or so was very rough for applicants. Also, there are a lot of other people in the same situation as us (sitting and waiting) so the work load is going to be pretty heavy at first. On top of that, the government has a couple holidays coming up over the first week of January.

The backup plan is in motion

Jenny's fiance Vova has been doing everything he can to get letters of invitation for us to come in on 90 day private visas. Thankfully he has friends at his local immigration services office and has managed to speed up the process. He went to that office four days in a row and was able to get the initial "it will take ten days" answer cut down to just a few days. He picked up the completed documents this morning and they should arrive here tomorrow. Then we will go to the Ukrainian consulate here in Poland on Monday, apply for our visas, and hopefully have permission to reenter Ukraine!

The part that needs prayer now

There is still one part of this that is a little uncertain. We need to pray that the consulate will approve our private visas. We already have religious visas showing in our passports. If the official at the consulate wants to give us a hard time, he'll say "Why are you going in on private visas now? Your intentions are religious and I will only approve religious visas." We already tried to describe our situation to him earlier this week, explaining that the Ministry of Culture is not willing to look at religious documents at this time. But that got us nowhere. He would not accept visa applications for a 90 day tourist visa.

So please pray that the consulate approves our private visas and that we can return to Ukraine next week! Thank you.