Thursday, February 22, 2018

Grace, Compassion, and Blessed Waiting

“The Lord longs to be gracious to you; He rises to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for Him! (Is: 30:18)

We thank so many of you who have petitioned the Lord for us many times regarding Daniel’s citizenship and related travel documents. We believe we are nearing the end of a long process towards US citizenship for Daniel, and for that we are grateful. We are still waiting on the Lord and asking you to pray. 

Compared to citizens of most other nations, international travel for US citizens is relatively easy. International travel is very important for a missionary and this is the primary reason we are working so hard on Daniel’s US citizenship; it would give Daniel the freedom to travel into and out of the US as well as open doors for travel to other countries. Nigeria and the US both honor dual-citizenship, so Daniel can be a US citizen and a Nigerian citizen! Moreover, Corinne and Danny are both US citizens, and we believe it would be wise to have unified citizenship in our family. 

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This citizenship process has been complicated by Daniel’s missionary work. An important aspect of acquiring citizenship in the US is the establishment of residency in the US. Typically people applying for citizenship are living in full-time and continuous residence in the US. Given our station abroad as missionaries, this is not the case for our family! An attorney hired to assist in the process suggested Daniel stay in America for two years without traveling abroad. This was not an option for our missionary calling so instead, we asked people (you) to pray.




And God has answered your prayers. After all these long years of working through the mountain of paper work, repeated applications, interviews, and biometrics appointments, we recently received a naturalization interview appointment in New Jersey on February 27th. On short notice, we were able to arrange for our travel on the 26th and then immediately return to our work on Saturday, March 3rd; losing just one week of ministry time. In his short 6 months of life, Danny will have logged more air miles than most travel in a lifetime.

But we are not assuming anything. Instead, we are asking for your prayers for God’s grace one more time to get us over this citizenship finish line. Please pray on February 27th at 12:30pm Eastern Time for Daniel’s naturalization interview. Pray that God would give Daniel favor and that his naturalization would be granted during the interview. For, “The Lord longs to be gracious to you; He rises to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for Him!” (Is: 30:18)


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Thank you for praying with us. If God wills, we will return to Uganda on March 3rd; a whole family of US citizens with all three of us having US passports. Blessed are those who wait for Him.

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