We heard this afternoon from a friend who was able to visit the Embassy in Washington D.C., to ask in person what was happening with our visa application. Apparently the embassy workers are waiting on approval from D.R.Congo, and there is no indication of when or if that may come. Read more…
So we called for prayer for last Friday, and decided to wait until after mail on Saturday, just in case something weird happened. We believe that God is at work in this situation, though we don’t know what He’s doing… We waited until the very last minute, even until Sunday Read more…
Apparently a UN embargo on arms entering the DRC (except for purchases by the government) was renewed this week. But it didn’t limit itself to arms; it also includes two paragraphs on elections ((“Stressing the crucial importance of a peaceful and credible electoral cycle, in accordance with the Constitution, for Read more…
So the Congolese Embassy in Washington DC, which has had our passports for the past six (6) weeks, has just closed for the day, and there is no indication on USPS.com that they used my reply mail envelope to send our passports back to us (with or without visas inside Read more…
There are now three more mail deliveries before our trip should begin on Monday morning, and we still have no sight of our passports. The Embassy is not answering their phone, nor responding to Emails. To develop our next alternate plan, I called the travel agent (which we are required Read more…
I just finished drafting the line “good progress on dictionaries for each of the languages” for the newsletter we’re hoping to put out in the next couple days, and I realized I’m not sure that it is clear to all why that is a good thing. So here’s a bit Read more…
For those interested, this map has places we’ll be going, both outbound and inbound.
Our passports arrived in Washington DC on May 12, some five weeks ago today, and they’re still not back yet. They’re supposed to take ten days, and we’re supposed to leave in less than two weeks. We have cut it closer than this in the past and been OK (not Read more…
I was walking in the door of our little university apartment after a long day teaching boisterous third graders. Kent was soon to graduate with his MA in Linguistics, but his university schedule varied. He was already home, sitting on our couch with a grin. He made me listen to Read more…
Joel poses with a couple of his cabin mates. They all started out best friends, as nine of the ten of them were in the same cabin last year. But this afternoon, one wanted to stay in bed because others were being mean. So we took a break from our Read more…