Blog

This past week has been a lot.

When is my life not, but this had a lot of extra things thrown in that I’ve been awed to watch God take care of.

Most of my Monday was spent dealing with Immigration New Zealand. They’d updated their website while I was travelling, and my application that I’d spent months pulling documents into order and uploading was suddenly inaccessible. The kind man on the phone told me IT didn’t know how to fix it, and they were recommending all applicants just start a new one. Not that I want to drag this out, but I had spent months making sure my application was in order, and I’d timed the submission date to fall between two America trips due to some ambiguous wording on the renewal of my current visa. This delay and need to restart meant I was overdue by mere days on the background checks from America and Germany.

I can whine about that all I want, but 25 months isn’t 24 according to the New Zealand government, and the German government refuses to give the fancy green stationary with my name and “no record” to me online. No, instead I have to print off an application that I have to get notarised and physically mail to Germany for them to process in 3-4 weeks and mail my resulting nearly blank fancy paper to me. Also the FBI requires some pretty detailed work for fingerprinting, but that’s Thursday’s business, and we’re just at Monday.

So my medical check (remember that really nice Swiss doctor I met two years ago?) actually is still valid, but when I was uploading everything, the online form was getting confused between 3 and 36 months and not letting me move forward without a new chest x-ray and medical exam. I called my GP and they were useless, so I did another google search and called the practice down the road asking if they could help. They told me to come in and pay the deposit and make an appointment for next week.

Tuesday I had an extended staff meeting and left more motivated than ever to make sure I don’t get deported. I love my job. I genuinely am so grateful to be a part of this team who cares about sharing the Gospel and seeing our city transformed as people grow in relationship with Jesus. I never want to leave. I also had lunch with Hannah and Christy and then both my life groups in the afternoon and evening. I love where I live; I love this life God has blessed me with. My family life group had me practice my Easter Camp talk, and Kieran gave me some incredible feedback to push it from good to better, and now I’m in the practicing stage of getting it to the best version possible.

I spent a few more hours on the phone with Immigration on Wednesday to clarify what “be in New Zealand” meant for submitting an application renewal when my current visa allows for multiple entries and unrestricted travel. The guy was a bit confused at first when I was trying to explain that my issue related to a trip to Chicago the last week of June for TeachBeyond that threw off the balance of time to allow for my application to process. If I wasn’t allowed to leave the country while my application was being processed, I needed to wait to submit it until I returned, but as I’d planned my trip (fortunately not having purchased tickets yet), I was going to visit family in the following weeks and return to New Zealand just five weeks before my current visa expires. The website gives the sUpEr HeLpFuL disclaimer that MOST applications process within SIX weeks. My original plan had been to get the renewal processed before this June/July trip (hence the timing of submission before the other documents expired and within enough margin to process before leaving at the end of June). Now needing to wait 3-4 weeks for the German government paper and roughly the same timeframe for my fingerprints to process in the US… I didn’t have a six week margin if I needed to stay in country during the whole application processing period. He told me he’d look into it and call me back in the next couple of days.

Deep breath as we start Thursday: I had to go into the office to wait for a parent to drop off a tent, but I was using the time to do more visa paperwork and was getting my German document ready for notarisation. I needed to pay 13 euros to the Department of Justice, but remember how my German online banking is frozen? Well, I went to make the payment through Wise, and on the last step, Wise said they couldn’t pay that particular account. With no reason. Just to be a pain. So at 11:30am, I send Chris a text knowing he should be asleep at 1:30am in Germany but it’s yearbook season so he won’t be… and sure enough, he replies within minutes. Meanwhile Donna pops in to ask a question and ends up caught up in my chaos as Chris calls me so he can confirm details to make a bank transfer from his account with the right dates for me to fill in my application.

Next I call the notary who says I can meet him in the carpark of his office (which isn’t accessible) at 3pm. Donna agrees to drive me because at this point she’s invested in making sure I don’t get deported in August. He watched me sign a piece of paper and then took it with my passport while we waited in the car. I laughed with Donna about how shady the whole thing would look without context. Then he returned with a credit card reader and I paid him an outlandish sum for ten minutes of paperwork for him to stamp a paper, but here were are. Donna took me home and helped me get started on the SuPeR fUn process of fingerprinting myself. Last time the ink I used left my fingers blue for days, but fortunately I’d borrowed some child-safe washable ink from Hannah this week, and I managed to get most of it off that night.

Friday morning, I triple checked the requirements and paperwork that I was sending overseas, and I made my way to the post office where I spent like an hour filling out the paperwork to literally send eight pieces of paper overseas in bubble wrap envelopes again paying outlandish sums of money. Then I showed up at church and carried on with some more Easter Camp prep before youth group. I also saw an email from Ethan who was giving the talk asking me to read over his draft. This guy loves Jesus, and he wants other young people to know Jesus too. I’d hoped to meet up with him earlier in the week to go over this talk, but where was there time? So I read the draft and gave a note and chatted with him before youth group as he prepared his heart to share God’s word.

“Do you get nervous before speaking to groups?” he asked me.

I shared that I’m not a big stage fright person, but that Phil had given me very wise advice before my first message when I told him I felt “appropriately nervous.” In essence, he told me you should always be a little bit nervous sharing God’s word. It’s a weighty responsibility, and he wouldn’t let me be doing it if I was flippant about it. I told Ethan the same thing: I wouldn’t let him be sharing with the youth group if I didn’t think he’d take it seriously enough. “Who knows? Ten youth might respond to the Gospel tonight – that’s exciting! But ten youth might respond to what you say, and that’s serious, so you better pay attention to that weighty responsibility.”

Guess what happened after Ethan’s message? TEN YOUTH RESPONDED. I cannot tell you how exciting it is to be in the room when young people (and not as young people) respond to God speaking to their hearts. This wasn’t ten first time salvation decisions, but that’s not the point. It also wasn’t ten people responding to Ethan. It was ten people responding to the Holy Spirit and saying they wanted to take God seriously in their lives. How cool.

All that visa chaos is for stuff like this.

This is what I’m made for. This is what I thrive in. To see God glorified and to be a part of his kingdom on earth in this city. I’m all in. So much so, that after that exhausting week, I got to my office at 8am to do some more Easter Camp planning before my champion site Dad showed up to load a few tents into his car and drive me out to Spencer Park to meet Matt and Alicia with more tents and plan out where to set things up as more able bodied hands came along to pitch thirteen tents. I love working with Matt in his element like this because he thrives on this Easter Camp stuff, and he knows so many details that I have yet to learn about how to plan layout based on power points and access routes in case of mud and other things. We also had a good laugh about how efficient our volunteers might be with setting up the tents. I’m savouring that I was right on this one detail because Matt was right about literally everything else about the site. We were sitting down to lunch less than three hours after we started when Matt anticipated we’d need several more hours with the small number of volunteers I managed to scrounge up.

One last detail that was woven into this week was the release of my memoir. I had a lot of help to get it to the best version possible, but I also was scrambling to get it across the finish line in time for Easter Camp. The amazing EC crew offered to sell copies onsite if I had any. I got the Ingram Spark email this week that they were ready to order, so I paid for five boxes of them to be sent to my house immediately (even though they recommend ordering one and confirming the look in advance… so here’s hoping it’s all exactly like the eproof showed). They print and ship from Australia instead of New Zealand, and I paid an extra $30AUD to get them rush ordered. After a day, I got another email they were printed and ready for shipment. Then a text came through the following day that they’d arrive by Tuesday the 15th. Then at some point on Friday I got a text that needed confirmation details for delivery. Saturday afternoon I got a text that they were stuck at customs. Because it was a bulk order, I’d tipped over the NZD amount to become an importer.

I spent a while on Saturday afternoon reading through importing legalese, and did my best to report the situation and attach the application and necessary documentation to my order. I also felt a sinking disappointment that if it took the 2-3 business days, they might hold up my order long enough to not make it to Easter Camp. I was hoping to deliver them Wednesday, but in actuality, I want them there after I speak on Saturday night, so there still hope. Then at 8pm on Saturday night, I got an email response from the NZ customs service department asking for more information because I didn’t have a registered business. I explained my situation as a one off purchase, and I had a response with an approval number in less than two hours.

This morning, one last text from DHL came through and I replied with my new customs import number, and then almost immediately I got a phone call from someone in the Auckland DHL office. At 8:40am on a Sunday. This woman asked for the customs number to attach to all five boxes and gave me her email to forward the customs office acknowledgement of my unique circumstances and granting of the individual customs number.

What is happening?

Every time a block has come up in the past week, I’ve seen God pivot the plan and open a new path. I’ve had one of the wildest experiences of peace that passes understanding – there is no way I could understand what has happened through this week. Who am I to live this life? What an absolute treasure.

It’s still taken a lot of physical and emotional energy not to mention financial commitment. I’ll keep powering through until the day after camp when I get some time off, but I can only keep going in this awesome life with the support of people around me. Every prayer matters. If you’d like to sign up to pray for Easter Camp, there’s a really cool roster here for people to cover every hour of camp in prayer. It’s not me or RCC specific, but I so love that looking at the sign ups at the time of this posting, I know the majority of the people personally who are located across America and Germany and invested in praying for the youth of New Zealand.

Just before this stretch of payments to get my visa process going, I had a friend in Switzerland reach out to say she wanted to give me some financial support. That meant I had the funds in my account to make all these necessary purchases without hesitation. For anyone who would like to contribute to those ongoing costs, you’re welcome to give (US tax deductible) donations through my TeachBeyond account or can reach out to me directly.

If you’re curious about the numbers, here’s the purchases so far and anticipated:

$200 NZD – medical/chest x-ray deposit
€13 – Department of Justice in Germany background check application
$125 NZD – Notarising German background check application
$18 USD – FBI Fingerprinting application
$137.25 NZD – Postage to mail applications to Germany and US

(anticipated)
$365 NZD – medical/chest x-ray final payment
$1,355 NZD – Visa application renewal fee

It’s still worth it. TEN YOUTH RESPONDED. I can’t wait to report what happens at Easter Camp. To be honest, it’d be worth it if one person found hope and restoration. What a joy to be a part of it – and thank you to everyone who helps make this ministry possible.

Final note, depending on how many other pivots happen in my plans this week, I may or may not get a post scheduled for next week while I’m still on camp. I promise that there will be a beautiful update the following week.