Brother Brent – Visa Update

One of the great challenges missionaries have on the foreign field is that of visas. Each country is very different in what is required in order to stay for a while, and there are varying degrees of difficulty in how to obtain this possible permission. Understanding this, our family began working in February of this year with Greek authorities for permission to be in the country for the duration of the evangelistic effort in Thessaloniki. We submitted all the paperwork and requests promptly even driving and flying to destinations in order to have required meetings with officials. Each month that passed we inquired about our status and were assured all would be well. Knowing that US citizens can only stay in Greece for 3 consecutive months began alarming us when we never saw a response about our request. Our family came down to the wire and still had no answer. Finally, with only days left on our legal stay, we had to quickly leave Greece and go back to Romania. This prompted many prayers from the brethren in many places to ask for God’s favor to allow us to legally stay in Greece and get a response from the authorities. Thanks be unto the Lord for the answer to those petitions! Our lawyer has now obtained our family’s visas from the Greek Consulate in Bucharest, Romania, and they are in our possession. There is no way to communicate all of the difficulties and potential serious problems we had faced with these issues. The lack of prompt labor is a hallmark of Greek society. Being put off week after week with no resolution had left our work in Greece totally up in the air. Committing these things to the Lord’s will, we were resolved for whatever the final outcome may have been. We praise God for the positive result so that we may now legally get back to work in the streets of the city of Thessaloniki for the sake of the gospel. Your prayers made the difference!