Consulates, Schemes, and The Sovereign

Ashley is, as I type, hand-delivering our roughly 375-page visa application packet to the South African consulate in Los Angeles. Assembling this massive document has been a labor of months, and as of about 12:05 this morning, it was finally ready for submission.

South Africa has an embassy office in Washington D.C., and two consulate, or regional, offices in New York and Los Angeles. There are several reasons why we chose to hand-deliver our applications. For months I have been emailing and calling, unable to get through to any of the offices and not receiving any response. A banner on the website seemed to change every few weeks, at first stating that appointments were required and walk-ins would be accepted (?!?). Later, it read that only appointments would be honored, and to send an email to arrange an appointment. For a few weeks in July it stated the office was closed altogether (no timeframe provided) due to a covid illness. Recently, it changed to explain visa applications would be accepted via mail. As I considered sending, by mail, this mountain of sensitive documents and our original passports, to an office which was seemingly unreachable (was it even staffed?), I started to struggle with hopelessness.

There were so many potential points of failure, surely one of them would fall through. Would we unintentionally create a discrepancy somewhere within all these pages that would be an easy way to deny us? Did I understand what all the attachments were supposed to be? For example, we are directed to submit both an "original police clearance" and a "home country clearance." What's the difference? And then there's the certified copies. California notaries cannot certify document copies (with a few exceptions, none of which apply to our situation). Would my self-certification suffice? What about dummy tickets (another thing I had to learn); would our provisional itinerary be acceptable?

All this may sound like paranoia. In reality, we as Americans are spoiled. We expect, if we fill out a government form correctly (a form that includes pages of instructions), that we will get the thing we are requesting. However, over the last 10 months, other potential Hands at Work long-term volunteer families have been trying, over and over, to obtain their visas and have been faced with denial after heartbreaking denial. And the reasons given don't seem to be fair or just. "Sufficient funds for return travel are not available." What is sufficient? How can we know what a return ticket will cost in a year or two? "The applicant's CV lists an early childhood development diploma. Therefore, the applicant must register with the Ministry of Education prior to visa approval." A review of the entire application would have born proof that the applicant had no intention of formal early childhood instruction. Another reason: "Hands at Work is not listed on South Africa's website as an NPO (non-profit organization)." However, they are a registered NPC (non-profit company) and per an immigration attorney, this should be sufficient.

Speaking of immigration attorneys, did I mention I got to talk to one? My appointment was at six in the morning because of the time difference between here and South Africa (9 hours). We discussed a few unique situations with our applications. The other families also used the same immigration attorney. After their first two visa denials, they worked with the attorney to build their applications in a way that should have been impossible to deny. Yet they were denied for the third time. Those families are now appealing the decisions of denial. We have heard this process can take up to a year. So I feel my hopelessness was not simply misguided paranoia.

A very time-consuming, nonetheless interesting, part of the process has been learning about differences in terminology. While all my communication with individuals and organizations in South Africa has been in English, there are many (many many!) times when different words or phrases are used to describe something. This is especially true when it comes to legal, official, and medical documentation. One of the more interesting examples came up when I started researching health insurance. What's the South African term? A medical scheme. That sounds... suspicious. I mean, sure, most insurances are probably spending a large amount of hours just scheming to take our money, but at least the American term is reassuring, or, (trigger warning: bad dad pun) insuring.

I put off until the very end the elements which were time sensitive in one form or another. Either the notary stamps (within 30 days of submission), the bank statements (previous three months), or the more costly items like the medical schemes. Hold on to your hats, here's another challenge we faced. The kids, as students, are required to have South African insurance. Not international insurance, not travel insurance, but a scheme based in and approved by South Africa. As I'm exploring the schemes and trying to apply, I run into more and more issues. All the online applications I find require a South African ID. But you need to be in the country to get an ID. And then if you are able to circumvent that somehow, all the schemes require funding via South Africa-based bank. No credit cards allowed. It's a catch-22. You can't have insurance without being in South Africa. You can't come to South Africa without insurance.

After lots of communication with friends at the Hands at Work hub (headquarters), we were steered to an obscure student medical scheme geared toward international students and accepting credit card funding. With that out of the way, I continued the application process with international medical coverage for Ashley and myself. This proceeded, two days ago, into underwriting due to my disclosure of a back injury I sustained at the beginning of the year. My contact with the insurance company, Clarice, said it might take a few days but she would do her best to expedite our application. We don't have a a few days, Clarice, I said in my head.

God is sovereign. That means his power is absolute, unlimited, unrestricted, unrestrained, unbounded, boundless, infinite, ultimate, total, unconditional, full, utter, paramount. Throughout all this we have been praying, you have been praying. And throughout all this God has been working. How do I know? Let me tell you.

Yesterday at 7:08 p.m., I received the proof of medical insurance required for our application. This was the last piece of documentation we needed. Ashley's flight to LA was scheduled for 6:10 a.m. so we worked through the evening to sign, date, and verify we had everything in order. As I was about halfway through printing our bank statements (five accounts across three months, times five applicants = 75 pages), my laser printer told me it was out of toner. For those that don't have the intimate pleasure, a typical laser printer does not give a "low ink" warning and continue printing like an inkjet printer. When it's done, it's done. That's because of an interesting mechanical tracking device built into the toner cartridge. Every time a page prints (no matter the amount of toner applied), the cartridge advances the mechanism a tiny bit. When it finally gets advanced all the way, it presses a button in the printer saying it's done. What you see in the below picture is me disassembling the mechanism at 11:45 p.m. (less than seven hours before Ashley's flight) to manually reset a gear and trick the printer into printing the rest of our bank statements. I failed the first time, reinstalling the gear in a position that caused the printer to wail, with loud clicks, that I should be filled with hopelessness. Ashley, bleary-eyed, offered a prayer of hope to God. With the second attempt, the printer resumed its duties! How great is our God! With one last check, we closed the folder of paperwork and headed to bed.

There are so many other examples of God's sovereignty in this story, from the friends and connections that offered advice and even visited the consulate to confirm it existed (thanks Jen!), to providing us with the time and resources to satisfy all the requirements of the application and even hand-deliver it today!

We have also received an inheritance in Him, predestined according to the purpose of the One who works out everything in agreement with the decision of His will

(Ephesians 1:11)

God works it out. Let's remember though, not according to our purposes but His will. We can trust Him because He is trustworthy. I fell short on this, despairing at the seemingly endless pages of forms I had to complete, often guessing at what information to provide. Instead of trusting God, I surrendered myself too often to hopelessness.

At this point, we have no control on the bearing of our visa approvals, but it is not time to idly sit by. Now more than ever, we can pray for God's providence and sovereignty.

The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord

(Proverbs 16:33)