Things As They Are

When Amy Carmichael wrote the book “Things As They Are”, she received major backlash. She was told that people didn’t want to hear the cold, hard truth. They wanted the romanticized version. However, she wanted to present what it was really like, without sugar-coating it. Serving God always comes with a blessing, but living overseas has its fair share of challenges. In these posts, I have sought to give an accurate view of what living overseas is like.

Because there are so many people, there are ten people to do what one or two people in North America would do. And no one knows anyone else’s job, which leads to a lot of waiting and sometimes frustrating experiences. Earlier this week, my husband had to get a form proving he was living in this province for his vehicle registration process. He went into the registry place and, after waiting 3 hours, was told that they weren’t able to help him after all. He would have to drive to another office, which was an hour away. Because it was too late that day, he left first thing the next morning. He arrived when they opened and then waited with the others for an hour and a half until the officer showed up. After all this, he was told that there was a long list of documents he still needed (sadly no one informed him of this), so it was basically a wasted trip.

I had a taste of this when my visa wasn’t processed correctly after returning to the country. My children’s visas were processed correctly. All three had been applied for and processed at the same time, but for some reason, only mine needed to be redone. I was told to go to the Immigration Offices. As I waited there, the lady helping me had to ask a couple of her other coworkers questions, only for them to deduce that it was an error at the airport and there was nothing they could do to help me. They told me to go to the third floor of the airport. At the airport, I was directed to the first and then fourth floors (never the third floor). A kind man led me to the airport immigration office. As I was about to begin my spiel, the man stopped me: “This is the wrong place, this is for nationals only” then he took me to another office. When I was finally in the right spot, it took the man about 10 minutes to process everything and I was good to go. With driving and waiting, the entire endeavor had taken just over 3.5 hours.

As frustrating as it can be, living overseas has many perks. Fruit is much cheaper! The people are friendly and open. And there are so many little blessings God gives as we are here. Although some things take much longer and are harder than they should be, I am so thankful that God brought us here.