As I reflect on the decision to award me a visa for the UK I am so grateful for the journey that God has taken us on. Since finishing our FCM in March, Carol and I have been madly selling off almost all our belongings that we have acquired since getting married. We knew that God was leading us to move to the UK and also to work with YWAM while we are there. As we continued to seek God over where, Harpenden seemed to stand out for what we believed God was calling us to do, pastoral care. We sent in applications and were quickly accepted, things continued to fall into place. I felt closer to God than at any other time in my life. Easily the biggest revelation I had on my FCM was that I am a son, I am a child of God my Father. When it came time to apply for my visa I felt it was merely a formality. From what we understood, we just needed to apply for the visa and we would get it. YWAM in the UK is an A rated sponsor after all. I sent my documentation in and then 3 days later I received a phone call from the visa-processing centre in Manila, Philippines. I answered the questions the best I knew how, thinking I was communicating exactly what they needed to hear. It was 2 days later that I received my documentation back to say that my visa was denied. I couldn't believe it! Over the next few days it became very clear that I hadn't sent in enough information or given enough detail during my phone interview. They had every right to refuse me. Now if this had happened just 12 months earlier this would have been devastating to me. I would have begun to accuse God of not caring, of leaving me even to doubt who He was and His character. Finally I would have tried to examine what I had done wrong to cause this to happen. Gratefully this is not what I did, or what we did. One thing that has always stuck with me is that satan's 1st attack is always to get us to question God's character. I refused to do this. I made a point of declaring who God is in the midst of this. Another revelation from FCM was that we need to stay in the now. I had no control over what I had already sent in and said to UK immigration, we had no control over what may or may not happen down the track, but in the midst of what was happening we could find God. In the ‘now’ we can connect with God and know His peace, we can know His presence, we can be Fathered by Him. I am so grateful for all the people who prayed for us, who supported us. I am also grateful that no one tried to rescue us if that makes sense. It's very easy to feel for someone who is going through hardship to want to say something to encourage." I believe God is telling you........" But in a way that rescues you. Part of me wanted that, "this is all a mistake, it will all be better next time" type of message. But Carol and I found ourselves seeking out our Father and finding Him in every day, and trusting Him with our process. Now I won't say that we did that perfectly every day but we did connect with Him. One of our next steps in the visa process was to lodge an appeal. We had some people give us some great advice not to panic and quickly submit our appeal, but to take our time to make sure it was right. We did this. We sought out people who had experience with visas, and how to word things correctly. Again as we sent the appeal off I began to stress, what's going to happen, what if they say no again? I brought the whole thing to God. I had no control over who would see my appeal, or in what light they would read it, what their personal beliefs about missionaries would be etc. But the more I thought about these things the more I was anxious, the more I was stressed. My only option was to surrender. I needed to surrender any thought of having control in this situation because truthfully I had none. I gave it all back to Him and as I did this my anxiety and stress levels lowered. Our hope and our trust is in Him. As you all know, my visa was denied again. We had missed our window to go to the UK, we would now need to aim for the January intake of staff at YWAM Harpenden. Throughout this time another idea came to light, maybe we could staff the FCM in Perth before heading to the UK. Obviously that is what happened. We are absolutely grateful to be here. We are continuing to learn more about our Father and about His heart for the broken, whether they be an abuse victim, or an addict, or someone living with HIV/AIDS. There are so many other things that God has taught us over this period, but I wanted to write down how good our Father has been in this season. I want to honour God by saying how faithful He is, how good, how gentle, how amazing He has been with us as a family. How unbelievably great it is to be His son and His daughter. We love you! |
Hattons...We're a family of four changing the world starting with ourselves! Archives
February 2018
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