Life may not have handed us lemons, but with our visa delay it certainly feels like a curve ball. Though we may not be wielding a lemon shooting gun, like this cartoon, we’re making the most of an unexpected situation.

It has not been easy reshuffling our fall plans at the last-minute. This added time in Canada has raised a lot of questions for us and not all of them have simplistic answers. In the absence of all of the facts that we would like to have in order to make informed decisions, it’s been great to have been able to call on a community of support and to know that God was not taken by surprise as we were. Rearranging our plans has been a great reminder that God has given us freewill and does expect us to make decisions. Faith is not tantamount to being babysat by the divine.

Matthew will be returning to Poland next month for a short time as a tourist. When we left Poland in July we paid our bills through until October 20th (we thought we had given ourselves more than enough time as we planned to return in September). He’s going back to check on our apartment (our electricity is pay-as-you-go and we’re hoping it’s still going), see if our car is still there, swap summer clothes for winter clothes, touch base with friends and see about the document we need for our visas. It’s an unexpected, yet essential, trip.

This choice does come with some sacrifices and we will not be able to participate in a few conferences that we either helped plan or were greatly anticipating. The EMERGE Conference in Czech Republic is especially close to our hearts as Amber has been helping to plan it for the last year and being at the conference to see the human impact of all that admin work is often the greatest reward of organizing. Missing the Eurasia Regional Conference, where our Global Worker family gets together, is also hard to miss as it is the only time in a year where our entire community is together. This decision also makes it more real that we will have our baby here in Canada and thus our return to Poland will most likely come at the start of 2012.

We guess that would be the lemons – so now for the lemon gun. Being in Canada, surrounded by friends, family and familiar things, is not a bad thing (especially as we are about to have our first child). We want you to know that we are seizing this time as an opportunity to do work in ways we often don’t get. We’ve had opportunities to speak with individuals, with churches and with students at Summit Pacific College. Also, through PAOC’s office in Langley, BC we are able to assist with a few projects that are truly exciting. Some of them are highly visible, like the upcoming Global Summit, while others are behind the scenes as we have been asked to be a part of a panel that works on the systems by which we train and send new Global Workers. Whether in Europe or in Canada, there are worthwhile ways for us to contribute and we’re doing exactly that.