My God is
persistent. He is persistent on loving
me, persistent on burning in me, persistent on keeping me wholly for Him.
This is what
He revealed to me about Himself in the last few weeks. October 19, 2012 was the expiration date of my Thai non-immigrant visa. This visa is the hinge of all our documents here --- my work permit, Jason’s visa --- thus allowing us to legally stay in Krabi. In February of this year, I acquired my U.S. citizenship in Hawaii where I was granted my US passport. This event marked the end of a long process of making sure that it’s okay for me to stay out of the States for a very long time. Thinking that since I am no longer a Filipino citizen both Jason and I agreed that I should use my US passport in entering Thailand. And our first agenda on the first day of our arrival here was to go to the immigration office to figure out how I can transfer all of my visa stuff from my Philippine passport to my US passport. After explaining our situation with what we thought was enough information to the immigration officers, the advice we got was to wait for October --- the month of my visa renewal. Needless to say, we took it as raw and as simple as the advice came from the authority we believed understood where we are.
Our naïveté
brought us eight months later to a huge immigration bureaucratic mess that
could have ended up with us leaving the country. Learning of our mistake, our hearts were
crushed and, I must admit, I was very angry.
It is never as simple as that. Not
with immigration. Now we have this
exorbitant amount to pay at the border with money we don’t have, and I have to
leave the country immediately. For me to
go back, I have to re-apply at the Thai Embassy in Penang, Malaysia hoping to
be granted, despite being branded as overstaying for 208 days in Thailand, with
a new visa on my new passport.
We prayed.
We spoke to fellow Christians, and they prayed.
We shared with our supporters, and asked for prayer and help. And we prayed more. And in 3 days or so, not only did we raise
more than enough money to pay the fine and for the trip to the border but our
hearts were filled with extreme peace and comfort with the assurance that all
will be well.
We felt your
prayer.
We felt God.
The incident
that happened turned out to be a reminder for us that God is persistent in
keeping His love, in keeping His promises, in keeping us wholly for Him. He wanted to show His strength when we are
totally weak and desperately in need losing any control over the
situation. The confusion at the
immigration and the anger that resulted out of it was definitely the enemy’s
handiwork, but the glory that came out of the mess because God’s people
gathered together in strength for Him was definitely our Lord’s handiwork.
For some,
what happened was mere bad luck. For us,
what happened was a God moment. One that
would make you look to Him and say, “You are indeed amazing and persistent!”
