Week Eighteen - Winds of Adversity

If you regularly follow my blog, you will remember I wrote about our recent interview with the UK Border Agency. Traumatized and Compliance were the titles of the two blog posts. Well, today I must write again with a heavy heart. The winds of adversity are certainly blowing, and it seems to be a wind of irrevocable change.

On Wednesday, April 26, we received a very lengthy letter from the UK Border Agency citing every possible infraction they could find in our sponsorship. Some things were easily adjusted, but two requirements have made it impossible to continue with the sponsorship of missionaries into Great Britain under the umbrella of our church in the same manner which we have been doing since 2008.

The first requirement is that every missionary must work at the location of the church that sponsors them. So, every missionary we sponsor would be required to live in Wolverhampton for at least the first five years.

Also, the church must pay the missionary's salary. I don't know of any mission church here in the UK that could afford to pay a missionary. Most cannot even pay their own pastor. Funnelling missionary support through a sponsoring church is fraught with complications.

On Friday, April 28, after speaking to an immigration advisor and a solicitor, we were told this was not a battle we could win. So with a heavy heart, we informed our current seventeen sponsored families. Oh, how they need your prayers. Any sponsor who could take them would fall under the same two requirements. So, churches are hustling to get a sponsorship license, and missionaries are paying solicitors to help them with the process and trying to figure out how they can solve the situation on income.  It is all hands on deck here as they try to work through this wind of adversity. 

On Monday, May 1, we met with another lawyer who has agreed to put forward an appeal to the Border Agency. There is no promise of things being the way they were before, and the appeal process may be lengthy, but he believes he may be able to salvage some of this ministry and the ministries of our sponsored missionaries.

While we are all feeling heavy-hearted and grieving, we know God is the Master of the wind! He is forcing people to step up and open more doors for sponsorship. He is testing the faith of many and will prove Himself mighty to deliver.

Meanwhile, pray fervently for these missionaries as this ill wind blows.