Croatia update

From Taylor...

To my prayer warriors in Jesus Christ,
Thank you for all the encouragement and prayers for our situation. I wanted to update you quickly on what is going on in our situation. It appears that there is no school in Rijeka that we can attend that is approved by the Ministry of Croatia (needed to get a visa) without already having a visa. It is a catch-22 created by all the new laws passed in the country. It is possible that through the connections our director has in Zagreb that we could get into a class approved by the Ministry in Zagreb and drive there every few weeks. Zagreb is set up to accommodate foreigners wanting to stay better than Rijeka is. Another option is to have our land lord who is a lawyer at the Hague make a few phone calls to help us out. He is a very influential man but not one that we have had the best interactions with in the past as he raised our rent from the contract price. We are also meeting with a Croatian lawyer who believes that he might be able to help. None of these options feel very secure currently, so we are trying to keep our hope in the Lord. He is our dwelling place and will take us where He desires. If we are deported, we will most likely move to another Eastern European country together to do ministry there. We do not know where yet. It is possible that we be deported in 2 weeks or in a few months. The Croatian police department doesn’t work very quickly, so we really don’t know when even though they said around 2 weeks.

Please pray for:
· That we would represent Jesus Christ in everything. We want to respect Croatia and be completely ethical and blameless in this even though it feels like we are not being treated well.
· That we would be granted our visas, God willing. As we are meeting with students, it is so hard to tell them that we might be leaving. We want to keep working with them and speaking God’s truth to them.
· For unity as this is very stressful. Some people on the team need their space to deal with these things, but please pray that God would bring us back together.
· For peace and encouragement. There are some on our team who have been feeling very discouraged for many reasons. Others need peace as they feel like our lives have not had a lot of stability recently with all the traveling, especially during the Islamic demonstrations in Sarajevo, and now the threat of deportation.