First things first, my sister Avril just had a little boy this evening so welcome into the world Charlie Rogers!! We will be getting your cousin soon so please be patient...
We haven't anything more to update tonight other than a few more 'shoulds', we should get a copy of our LOI tomorrow and the original should make it to the embassy in London by Friday.
As we can't get an early enough flight into London on Friday we intend to fly over on Thursday evening and be waiting at the Embassy first thing Friday for our Visa. If it all goes well we are going to try to move our flights to Saturday morning!
Also thanks to Amy for the Shiny River Hotel link, its looks a bit nicer than the hotel in our picture, we have already found out that they have rooms available for the time we are staying.
We will hopefully be able to confirm tomorrow that we have actually got copies of our LOI.
We really appreciate all who are praying all round the world for us, keep it up, we're nearly there!
Philip & Amanda
Wednesday, 23 January 2008
Monday, 21 January 2008
Monday holiday
This is the week we expect to get our LOI, our representative in Ust (Nadia) is hoping to pick it up today and fax a copy to our agency then take the original to Astana, it should then make its way by telex to London for Thursday.
However Monday is a holiday in the USA so we won't have confirmation that this has happened until Tuesday evening. We'll keep you posted.
We are now starting to believe its all happening and are beginning to make plans for being away for 6-8 weeks! We are trying to find out the best way to keep in contact with home, our hotel only has dial-up connection but we have been told there is an Internet cafe close to our hotel with wireless broadband, sounds like we are going to be having a lot of coffee out there! We also plan to buy phone cards and possibly a mobile phone for our time there, as well as a bit of time working I also plan to finish next years thirsty4god articles!
Quick plug, check out http://www.thirsty4god.co.uk/
The pic below is the hotel I think we are staying at in Ust, as Amanda's natural state is being cold I'm not sure if she is going to cope with minus 25C!!!
Keep praying, nearly there!
Philip & Amanda
However Monday is a holiday in the USA so we won't have confirmation that this has happened until Tuesday evening. We'll keep you posted.
We are now starting to believe its all happening and are beginning to make plans for being away for 6-8 weeks! We are trying to find out the best way to keep in contact with home, our hotel only has dial-up connection but we have been told there is an Internet cafe close to our hotel with wireless broadband, sounds like we are going to be having a lot of coffee out there! We also plan to buy phone cards and possibly a mobile phone for our time there, as well as a bit of time working I also plan to finish next years thirsty4god articles!
Quick plug, check out http://www.thirsty4god.co.uk/
The pic below is the hotel I think we are staying at in Ust, as Amanda's natural state is being cold I'm not sure if she is going to cope with minus 25C!!!
Keep praying, nearly there!
Philip & Amanda
Friday, 18 January 2008
Getting Close
We have changed our flights to the 29th January. There is even a slim chance we could fly out on the 26th! However after all that has happened to us so far we won't get to excited until we are actually on the plane leaving Heathrow!
We would love to be able to be definite about our dates but we are as close as we can be without being 100% certain. Our agency have told us that our representative in Ust, Nadia, should be able to get our LOI on Monday, we should get a copy of it by Tuesday and the Kaz embassy in London should get it by Thursday which should mean that we should be able to fly over to London on Friday to get our visa. There are FAR to many 'should's' in that last sentence for our liking but we leave it with the Lord and trust that His timing will be perfect as it has been already.
Whenever God told Abraham he was going to have a son in his old age the bible says that he was 'strong in faith, giving glory to God' and that he was 'fully persuaded that what he had promised he was able also to perform' . That amount of faith would be nice to have!
There is a national holiday on Monday so we will post around Tue or Wed and let you know if the mysterious LOI has finally arrived.
Keep on praying.
Philip & Amanda
We would love to be able to be definite about our dates but we are as close as we can be without being 100% certain. Our agency have told us that our representative in Ust, Nadia, should be able to get our LOI on Monday, we should get a copy of it by Tuesday and the Kaz embassy in London should get it by Thursday which should mean that we should be able to fly over to London on Friday to get our visa. There are FAR to many 'should's' in that last sentence for our liking but we leave it with the Lord and trust that His timing will be perfect as it has been already.
Whenever God told Abraham he was going to have a son in his old age the bible says that he was 'strong in faith, giving glory to God' and that he was 'fully persuaded that what he had promised he was able also to perform' . That amount of faith would be nice to have!
There is a national holiday on Monday so we will post around Tue or Wed and let you know if the mysterious LOI has finally arrived.
Keep on praying.
Philip & Amanda
Tuesday, 15 January 2008
Ust Baby House
After months of negative posts its great to be able to look forward to travelling out to Ust again! We should hear from our agency later this week about when we can expect to get our LOI, after all that has gone on before we won't get too excited yet but hopefully we should be heading off to Kazakhstan in the next two weeks or so!!
We've found a few pics of the actual baby house we will be travelling to so lets see if I can still remember how to post pics on this blog!
Keep praying that the MOE in Ust will issue our LOI quickly! As soon as we have a date for travel we will let you know.
Philip & Amanda
We've found a few pics of the actual baby house we will be travelling to so lets see if I can still remember how to post pics on this blog!
Keep praying that the MOE in Ust will issue our LOI quickly! As soon as we have a date for travel we will let you know.
Philip & Amanda
Friday, 11 January 2008
At last!!!!
Its finally happened, after two and a half months of broken promises the MOE official has at last handed over our dossier to Alma this afternoon!!
Even as i'm typing i can hardly believe it! Alma will now fly our dossier to Ust tomorrow and hand it over to the regional office who will process our LOI.
The only slight disappointment is that our travel date of the 19th January is not going to be feasible, we will find out next week when our LOI is likely to be ready but our new travel dates should be around the 25th - 30th January. We are not to worried about this to be honest, we are just so happy that we have finally cleared the MOE in Astana!!
Thanks to all who are praying for us, keep it up we are nearly there now. It makes a nice change to be posting good news!!!
Praise the Lord for answered prayer!
Pray that the LOI stage will go quickly and that we can travel soon.
Pray that our child will continue to thrive and be preserved.
Philip & Amanda
Even as i'm typing i can hardly believe it! Alma will now fly our dossier to Ust tomorrow and hand it over to the regional office who will process our LOI.
The only slight disappointment is that our travel date of the 19th January is not going to be feasible, we will find out next week when our LOI is likely to be ready but our new travel dates should be around the 25th - 30th January. We are not to worried about this to be honest, we are just so happy that we have finally cleared the MOE in Astana!!
Thanks to all who are praying for us, keep it up we are nearly there now. It makes a nice change to be posting good news!!!
Praise the Lord for answered prayer!
Pray that the LOI stage will go quickly and that we can travel soon.
Pray that our child will continue to thrive and be preserved.
Philip & Amanda
Thursday, 10 January 2008
Still on the rollercoaster
Quick post to keep you all updated, Alma called with the MOE again today in order to get our promised dossier, she was told once again that she couldn't have it but if she came back tomorrow then it would definitely be handed over.
We were praying that if she didn't get the dossier this time then we would at least be given different information than the standard 'come back next week' line. Alma seems pretty certain that it will FINALLY happen tomorrow so we need everyone to pray hard that this will be the case.
We will update as soon as we hear anything tomorrow.
Philip & Amanda
We were praying that if she didn't get the dossier this time then we would at least be given different information than the standard 'come back next week' line. Alma seems pretty certain that it will FINALLY happen tomorrow so we need everyone to pray hard that this will be the case.
We will update as soon as we hear anything tomorrow.
Philip & Amanda
Friday, 4 January 2008
New year, same problem...
Happy 2008 everyone!
The Christmas holidays obviously did nothing to improve the mood of our MOE official! Alma met with her on the 3rd of January as she had been asked to and after waiting for over 3 hours she was told to come back on the 10th and she would be given the dossier then.
We are understandably dubious that this will happen on the 10th so we have asked our agency to find some alternative regions for us. There are two possibilities which we should get a little more info about next week.
This will at least give us some options rather than the current never ending waiting for Ust!
By next week we should be in one of the following categories,
1. The MOE official has finally kept her word and Alma gets our dossier on the 10th.
2. Alma is told to come back in a weeks time AGAIN and we decide to wait.
3. Alma has been told to come back but rather than waiting we decide to move regions.
We pray that the way ahead will be made clear and that we will have a direction to move in by next week.
Pray That the Lords will for us will be clearly seen and we will finally start moving forward again.
We will keep you posted, keep praying!
Still keeping the faith!!
Philip & Amanda
The Christmas holidays obviously did nothing to improve the mood of our MOE official! Alma met with her on the 3rd of January as she had been asked to and after waiting for over 3 hours she was told to come back on the 10th and she would be given the dossier then.
We are understandably dubious that this will happen on the 10th so we have asked our agency to find some alternative regions for us. There are two possibilities which we should get a little more info about next week.
This will at least give us some options rather than the current never ending waiting for Ust!
By next week we should be in one of the following categories,
1. The MOE official has finally kept her word and Alma gets our dossier on the 10th.
2. Alma is told to come back in a weeks time AGAIN and we decide to wait.
3. Alma has been told to come back but rather than waiting we decide to move regions.
We pray that the way ahead will be made clear and that we will have a direction to move in by next week.
Pray That the Lords will for us will be clearly seen and we will finally start moving forward again.
We will keep you posted, keep praying!
Still keeping the faith!!
Philip & Amanda
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