More than halfway

We have just completed week 7 of the lecture phase, which means we are just over halfway done.  We head out for outreach on March 28th, so we have about 5 weeks left here in Kona.  Things are going well, but it seems as though we have hit the 7th week slump.  Everyone is tired, many are fighting off sickness, and the spiritual warfare is getting heavier.  With each week that goes on, the students are taken into a deeper revelation of who God really is, and Satan doesn't like it.  The more people realize the truth of who God is, they begin to realize who they are, and the power & authority they have in Christ.  Satan can't have people knowing truth and walking out in who they were created to be because it doesn't work for his plans.  So he's fighting hard to bring things against people so they can't learn truth.  People are being hit with sickness, facing trouble in relationships, lack of finances, and just being fed lie after lie by him.  It's a battle.

Another battle we are currently facing is a battle of visas.  Four of our teams will be heading into India for two weeks before we head into our other countries...so that is 32 people needing Indian visas.  From the beginning this has been a battle.  We started two weeks ago by filling in all the visa applications and had them about ready to send off.  There was one more thing that needed to be added to the applications, and overnight the Indian govt. changed the visa application process.  This meant that we had to start the whole thing all over again because the application forms had changed.  One morning in class, we attempted to do it all together, but the internet wasn't working.  There's no reason why it shouldn't have been working.  The internet was there, it showed up on our computers, but for some reason, just wouldn't connect.  There's no logical reason why it shouldn't have gone through.  So we started to pray.

We prayed, we proclaimed truth, read scriptures and worshiped.  One computer got connected.  We continued praying and worshiping.  The one computer lost its connection.  We never received working internet, but we did end up having a sweet time of worship and just entering into God's presence. 

The board w/the scriptures & words of truth we received during worship

So since the class wasn't able to fill in their visa applications, the job fell to me and two other staff members.  We went to another location where internet was working and proceeded to fill out applications for all 32 people.  It took the 3 of us 10 hours!  Crazy.
The way India requires its visas to be done, you have to fill out the application, print that out, have it signed by the person within a small box and if it goes out of the lines, you have to reprint (this happened multiple times because people just couldn't get their signatures in the box).  After it's signed, you attach visa photos, then scan it into another online program they have, input the information into another location, then print out a form that has an application ID# and you have to cut it out to paste on an envelope.  We got this all done for all 32 applications, got them packaged together by team, and sent them off via FedEx with a return mailing envelope for them to return our passports to us.  They were finally sent of this past Tuesday.  I tracked the packages and found that they had been delivered Friday morning to the embassy in San Francisco.  Hooray, the process is finally done!  Now we just wait to get them back.

Then, during class yesterday, I received an email from the visa people saying that they could not process our visas because the return mailing envelope could not be hand-written, it had to be printed.  Are you kidding me?!?!  So we called them and they said just fill out a label online and email it to them, but be sure to include all the application ID#'s that are to be included in each envelope.  Great...I don't have those.  So I had to have all 31 other people email me the email they received from the visa company because it had the ID# in it, so that we could write the ID#'s on the return envelope.  But also in this process, we discovered that all of our students who are from other countries received a different email saying their visa could not be processed because they do not have 2 year visas for the US, they only have 6 month student visas.  What?! 
So now there is a new issue.  We have to get back all of their visas and send it back to their home country so that it can go through their country to the Indian embassy.  This is such a pain!  And so time consuming!!!  We have 5 weeks to get the passports w/visa application to the right country, to the right embassy and back before we leave, and the Indian embassy says it can take 5-6 weeks, plus 3 of the teams have to get visas to another country after we get them back from the Indian embassy.  This is going to be a battle.

So there is just some craziness going on and the enemy is trying to keep us from going where we are supposed to be going.  Please join us in prayer that our visas will be processed quickly and be returned to us before we leave, and so we can get our other visas if needed.