Finally after many months we have some news to report on our visa progress. It has been 4 months since we made our most recent request to the Spanish Ministry of Justice to certify the existence of the church and our membership in it.
For those of you who may not be up to speed on our visa process, to make a very long story short, our application for a visa and all of our documentation has been certified except one vital letter. The letter we are waiting on is called a Certification of Verification and it’s function is simply to confirm and verify that the church in Spain is registered with the government (which it is) and that we are members in good standing of that church (which we are). The certificate doesn’t have to evaluate, consider or approve anything it is simply a verification of facts.
We already received the letter in February but there was a typo and it was missing 10 important words so we had to make a new request for the letter. The whole process is very time dependent and some of the paperwork expires after 3 months. So we have had to constantly reapply for certain certifications from the FBI and our doctor and our insurance.
The good news though is that FEREDE the Federation of Evangelical Religious Entities of Spain and FADE the Federation of the Assemblies of God have taken up our case. FADE has made an official invitation to us as ministers and have made a formal request to the Spanish Government for Certification of Verification on our behalf and FEREDE has taken on our entire immigration case. FEREDE has an entire department dedicated to helping missionaries get visas and they have a 100% success rate and their average wait time for visa approval is 2-3 months. We are thankful that they have taken up our cause and it is a blessing to be able to have some sort of time frame so we can begin to see a departure date on the horizon. It is our hope that with FEREDE and FADE working on our case and the local church continuing to press our case that in the near future we should see some results.
We had to re-apply for FBI clearance a process that takes at least 3 months so we know that we have at least 3-5 more months that we will be here, but knowing that helps us and encourages us.
Knowing we will be here a while longer we have partnered with a church in Safford Arizona to help support them in ministry. You can read more about that here.
Please pray with us that one of the hooks we have in the water get’s a bite soon and we can move on to the work that God has for us in Spain