Our journey can be summarized in three phases:
1. Allocation
2. Administration
3. Renovation
1) We are mostly done in the allocation process; yes, we are in Vanuatu, but we have not made it to our island yet, nor to our home in the village. Arriving at the airport 4 hours early sometimes means… you are “on time”. Both in USA and in Australia we found that 4 hours was still cutting it a bit close. There were some complications with the Covid testing requirements (in Australia-PCR), on one flight we were not seated together and on another flight they had us on separate planes! But God graciously made it all work out, never smoothly or easily, but eventually, we made it here TOGETHER and with all of our luggage!
2) Now onto the administration side, mostly everything on the administration side is “finished” or “in process” (we just turned in the last of it, a few hours ago). Anywhere from license renewal, medical exams, insurance, in country flights, to satellite provider to most importantly; visa renewals. Everything is either finished or in the “processing” stage. Once we have confirmation of the visa renewal (hopefully as early as sometime next week), we will head back to the island that God has called us to serve on, Espiritu Santo.
3) Lastly, once we arrive back on Santo, we will then check on the status of our house; water, piping, and electrical (solar), along with the process of cleaning years of mold off of everything, and then renovate whatever our house needs, along with the various Bible School dorms and buildings that were affected by the many cyclones (hurricanes) that have hit our island in the past two years.
Our trip to the capital has been a learning curve; we have not been here in 5 years and many things have changed, which means more walking around to find where we need to go (we easily get our 10k steps everyday before we get home at night). We are also making many more connections with other mission organizations while we are here, we are trying to use our time as effectively as we can. All of these various paperwork’s are being processed as of right now, but we ask that you would please pray for our visas to be approved and processed quickly so we can get back to serving the Tiale people. This process is in the Lord’s hands now, along with the prayer of His saints, and in advance, we say thank you! Stay tuned for an update…
Your feet to the Tiale people and the country of Vanuatu, Seth and Nicole Stokes
Stoking The Fires 