Merry Christmas!

Paris or Rome… we’ve gotta go home

As some of you know, my team and I are returning to the States over the holidays with the purpose of applying for religious visas. My November prayer letter explains more about this.
When we found out that we were going to return home, we adopted the Michael Bublé song “Home.” One of the lines in the song is “Paris or Rome…but I wanna go home.” We slightly modified the song to say “Paris or Rome…we’ve gotta go home.”
I am excited that I will get to be home for the holidays with friends and family, but wish I could stay here and continue with ministry. Over the past few days we have been getting stuff together for our trip back and for our application for the visas. One of the things I had to get was passport photos. (pictures on the left) Let me tell you about the photos. I find this photobooth, put some money in and sit down. I’m not sure how much it costs, so I look around and saw a flashing light on a button. I pushed the button. I sit there for about 10 seconds and nothing happens, so I look back over to the button.

FLASH! —>photo #1

Me thinking to myself: “Whoops! guess that means that I wasn’t looking at the camera for the pictures, oh wait! Is it going to take one picture for all of them, or is going to take four seperate pictures. Oh look, it’s saying something in Italian. If only I could understand Italian.”

FLASH! —> photo #2

“I guess that answers that question. I better look at the camera this time.”

FLASH! —> photo #3

“Now that wasn’t so bad, keep it up Joel, only one more to go!”

FLASH! —> photo #4…..

“I guess I should have smiled…”