The highlight of February (besides the visas) was having the opportunity to see a friend of the boys from Chna get baptized here in CM. As we walked closely with his mom in Chna, it was a blessing to be there with them for this event.
We are pleased to announce that, not only has our visa problem been solved – but also Amanda’s! It’s unbelievable that everything is falling into place so easily and quickly all of a sudden for both of us. Lance says he’ll believe it when she’s standing in our living room, but as far as we can be sure, she’s able to come as soon as she’s able to come! (You followed that, right?)
Amanda will come on a tourist visa and then we’ll be able to switch her over to a student visa for the rest of the year. There’s a lot of details about all that but suffice it to say, it’s convoluted and bureaucratic, but once she’s here, she’ll be able to stay one way or another with all the COVID provisions for visas that they’re coming up with to help keep people here once they’re here. She’ll have to go through a quarantine period in Bangkok for 15 nights at a hotel set aside for that purpose before she’ll be able to join us here in Chiang Mai. So, although she leaves this month from the states (February 24) we won’t see her until March 13th because of quarantine (and the time change and how long it takes to fly here…)
The visa photo shop we found near our market. Like all small businesses and homes in Thailand, we had to take our shoes off before entering to be polite.
Our visas this past year have been student visas and since we can’t legally be students forever in Thailand, we needed to find a solution for staying here long-term. We are so excited God brought us a fantastic and more permanent solution for this coming year and the foreseeable future. Through a friend of ours, we’ve connected with a local Thai believer who started a Thai foundation to help foreigners like us (who aren’t connected with a large organization that has visas for their workers) to get visas for staying in the country on a more permanent basis. Through cooperation with them quarterly in their humanitarian work with local Thais and minority groups, Lance can get a volunteer work permit with dependent visas for the rest of us. We were so surprised at how easily this solution came to us right when we needed it (our student visas expire next month) and how well it fit our situation. This has not been our experience on the field and we praise God for how easily it was solved (if you put hours and hours of paperwork, meetings and immigration office visits in the “easy-because-inevitable” category, which we did since it lacked any extreme unforeseen stressful problems like we usually encounter). We’re also excited to have the opportunity and entrance into volunteering with the locals and minority groups around us, since that isn’t the overarching focus of our ministry.
Thank you for your continued prayer support,
– Ruth, for the Baker family
The gentleman who took our photos.
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No smiling, no glasses for visa photos.
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Snacks at the market while we waited for the photos to be printed.
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