Visas – Part 2

Now’s the agonizing part of the wait. We have an official countdown and every day that passes is a day closer to our departure. As each day passes and our visas aren’t approved yet, I feel a little more angst. Weeks pass, we hear nothing. Periodically we check in with our immigration adviser. Still nothing. When she does call INZ, they don’t give very specific updates so we just aren’t sure what to expect. I finally check INZ’s website to see what their typical work visa processing time is. The website states that it’s 23-25 business days, so I do the math and 25 business days lands us on July 17th. But July 17th comes and goes. No word.

At this point, all of our big furniture has sold minus our couch and we are sleeping on air mattresses. Our house echoes and it feels less like home with most of our stuff being gone. At this point, I am feeling antsy and extremely tired and stressed. Matt is definitely feeling the stress at this point too, but he keeps his cool much better than I keep mine. Nonetheless, we chug on. We keep selling stuff on OfferUp and doing whatever we need to do to get ready for our departure. Finally, a glimpse of hope comes on July 22nd when I received a call from my immigration adviser. She called to advise that our work visa application is in the final stages before approval and that it should be approved either by the end of that week or the beginning of the following week. This was great news because the chance of our visas being approved before our flight greatly increased. But there was still a chance that our visas could be approved after our departure date, which would mean that we would have to pay to change our flights. Even more daunting, we’d have to guess at a new departure date and hope that the fare difference wouldn’t be outrageous.

This was the time where I started receiving verses left and right and messages regarding waiting. The messages were spot on. I knew that God was telling me to hang in there, to wait on His timing. These messages came at the exact time I needed them, because at this point stress was getting the best of me and I was losing patience and feeling frantic. Honestly, the messages were so direct that they made me laugh because I knew I wasn’t hearing them by accident. In fact, I had started to become a doubting Thomas. God is so good though, because as soon as I started to doubt, God jumped in and extinguished it. He renewed my sense of peace.

Finally, our faithfulness was rewarded! On July 23rd, we received the long awaited news that Matt’s work visa had been APPROVED! Our immigration adviser advised us that the rest of our visa approvals (mine and the kids’) would follow over the course of the next few days. However, not an hour later and the rest of our visas came through! All I could think was: Whoa. This is it. We are leaving on SUNDAY. Suddenly, immigrating to New Zealand felt completely real. And folks, it is completely real. Now that nothing is stopping us, we will depart at 4 pm on Sunday. We will fly to Houston, then to Auckland, and finally to Palmerston North, our final destination. We will travel for a duration of 28 hours. The first flight will be about 2.5 hours, the second will be 14 hours, and the last will be 1.5 hours.

If there is anything that you can do for us right now, it is pray. Pray for our safety as we travel across the world. Pray for the transition to be as smooth as possible. Pray for us to find a place to live. Pray that Matt acclimates to his new job. Just pray.

With Gratitude,

The Cullums