How Quickly Things Change...

Three weeks before Christmas I was expecting to have a rather strange holiday period. Because of residency issues I was planning to stay in Slovenia, celebrate with friends and have a short holiday by the lakes. Then covid and other illness hit the church. My plans for youth group went out of the window. I'd prepared a couple of sessions of teaching and then a Christmas party. We ended up having the first session on Zoom and it reminded me once again how much I hated it. How did we ever do that for 2 years? In the end the second session was then cancelled for a variety of reasons. I guess I still have the material for next year right? We were able to have a Christmas party though!

Then, on 20th December, I received the letter I had been eagerly waiting for. The letter that said that my residency application had been approved and I just needed to go collect the document. All my plans suddenly went out the window. I quickly got in contact with my lawyer and established that I couldn't get the document before Christmas but that he was pretty certain I was allowed to travel. That day I cancelled my holiday, apologised to my friends and booked flights back to the UK.

View from the airport

Despite border force and train strikes, my journey to the UK was reasonably smooth, well apart from the policeman at border control at Ljubljana airport spilling his coffee over my passport... It seems to have survived its dousing OK (thank God!)

The Christmas time was a lovely period of rest, seeing all my family (including a niece I had never met before) and celebrating the birth of Jesus. Whilst the build up to Christmas was a bit strange, the end result meant that I could see many people in Swindon and at Saltford Community Church. Thank you all for your kind welcomes, support and encouragement.

I flew back to Slovenia on 2nd January (my slightly coffee stained passport didn't cause any issues) and was able to collect my residency document on 3rd. I am very thankful for all yours prayers and support. I really didn't expect it to come through this quickly. (I was worrying about what I would do if it didn't come in time for the ECM Biennial in Croatia in April!) Another thing to be thanking God for is that this time it is valid for 2 years. This means that I don't need to worry about reapplying until September next year. Thank God that everything has gone smoothly and that I am able to stay and continue the work I am doing here in Ljubljana.

For now, life is slowly getting back to normal. Youth groups start again tomorrow (the older one definitely, the younger one is still TBC) and my one to ones will start again next week.

Thank you for all your prayers and praise God for the way he has so obviously answered them!