ahhh... it's 16th of July...and Mrs Ison had naively thought that 10 months would be long enough for the visa to come through...but ok...we are hitting 11 months on 26th July..... and this morning, we received one of the most aggravating correspondence from the National Visa Centre yet...
first, some head and tail.... we had first applied for a spouse visa on 26th August 2013 and had submitted all the documents they asked for...it was a very tedious and repetitive...and mostly handled by my meticulous and long suffering husband.. and in June, I received a letter stating that I would have to send a copy of my passport and a police clearance check... and my husband needed to send evidence of support (his bank statement and employment history and all that jazz) and birth certificate...it was stated that no online submission was allowed and everything had to be done through snail mail...(which didn't make a lot of sense cos there were a couple of payments which we noticed and paid up promptly in April only to receive notification via snail mail in Singapore in May to please pay those bills BUT only online please....but we had already paid them a month ago...)
But ok, we send those documents via registered mail and thought that the next thing would be the letter informing me about the medical check up and interview at the US embassy in Singapore...because..in April we had also received noticed that the petition for the spousal visa has been approved...(Are you confused yet? Or just bored reading? Don't worry, I share similar feelings..) So the petition has been approved...is distinct from having the visa in my passport.... (at this point, friends would usually ask..'can't you go to the US on a tourist visa first?' Sure, I can but I need to come back for the interview and I do not want to delay things by being there when that letter arrives..and also, I am here so long that friends have asked me if I am already back from the US for a visit.....AND!! when people ask me for any prayer requests, I am always rather embarrassed when they suggest praying for the visa...cos it's been approved...so I thought that it's sorta waste of time / energy to pray about it when there are other much more meaningful stuff to pray about.... it's approved already...why bother praying right...?? WRONG.)
SO!
One week ago, the Keeper emailed the National Visa Centre on the status of the applicant.. (basically they just need to bundle all of the documents we have sent them so far and send them to Singapore for the interview here..) and the reply was essentially the same as the letter in early June and they stated that they have not received the documents they had asked for.......so we doubled checked and tracked the mail...my police clearance was delivered to the National Visa Centre on 25th June.........
I read the email first thing in the morning and was so angry that I jumped out of bed immediately and had breakfast... (what was for breakfast? Durian and mangosteens..) and turbulent thoughts whirled through my mind...
"Man! Do they not know how tedious it is to get a police check?! That's another $60 down the drain and another couple of weeks of delay at least?!!"
"Haven't I already done everything and sent everything they asked for?? And why couldn't they ask for everything in one shot??"
"This is such a waste of time!!! And I can't go anywhere!!!"
"And how inefficient this whole thing is!!!! This would not happen in Singapore!!" (but ok, I haven't applied for a visa in Singapore before so maybe I take this sentence back..)
As I was chomping down on the durians, the story of Moses hitting the rock when God told him to just speak to the rock came to mind...
I think the message is somewhere along the lines of 'in your anger, do not sin..'
then it was time for the daily skype with my darling husband and I was greeted with a very morose face...he looked like he had been crying or was about to cry, so I asked him if everything is alright...
He looked very surprised and said, "Haven't you received the email?"
I sure did as well...
We talked about the matter..and I must say that I was rather impressed by my tender husband...I read somewhere that anger is essentially a secondary feeling and in my case, I have bypassed sadness directly but my husband was able to accurately express the primary emotion.... and he was still very gentle and polite as seen by the civil email he had just drafted to the national visa centre which included screen shots of evidence of our documents being delivered to them...
I told him about how I had been reminded of the story of Moses..so we read it together and numbers 20:12 stood out...that Moses had struck the rock because he has not trusted the Lord...
and then we had our usual chat and I asked him what he had for dinner (occupational hazard and possible Singaporean/ Asian/ chinese thing) and he said that he was so upset that he didn't eat anything... and was planning to fast and pray tomorrow too... (the wife on the other hand, was planning to eat even more durians later in the day..)
and he also said something really endearing...previously I had said something to the effect of maybe I'm still in Singapore 'cos God wants to use me to minister to some people or heal me of some stuff.... or just basically prepare/ equip me, he wondered aloud if there's anything that God needs to do to prepare him before I go over too....
We ended off with praying and blessing the NVC and the postal services in Singapore and US and also reaffirming our trust in God and resting in the knowledge that yeah, He is in control and there are usually good reasons for unexpected delays...
and...now...please kindly release your extremely fervent prayers for us because we need all the prayers we can get and it does look like celebrating our first year wedding anniversary on 2nd August together in the US will take a major miracle..... (we both know we've got the rest of our lives together..what's a few more weeks, or gasp, months!!! At this point in time, we really just wanna start the next chapter of our lives instead of being in limbo....)
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