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Have you heard the expression “Boots on the Ground?” Well our Live Dead Missionaries are the boots on the Silk Road. Here we’d like to take a moment and allow one of them to share a snapshot of their life with you. Some names and details have been changed, but this is a true story from this colorful, vibrant, and sometimes surprising region.

It’s hard work, getting a visa in another country.

You assemble piles of paperwork, some of it translated, some of it notarized, all properly labeled and organized. Then upon arriving to submit it, you often discover what you were told you needed isn’t what you needed at all.

So it’s back to the photocopy shop, the translator, or the embassy. You try to navigate offices and websites; in a language you’ve just barely started learning. You ask for help or advice from others around you, who offer what they can but end it with the warning: “But that was last year (or last month, or last week). It might not be the same now.”

Every missionary along the Silk Road has spent hours, days or weeks dealing with this. It’s that unglamorous side of things that doesn’t look very good in a newsletter or on a blog. But without the proper paperwork, you can’t stay in your country of ministry. Sometimes keeping these things in order means taking your whole family out over the border. Sometimes it means being stuck in the country without permission to leave for months at a time.

The day your visa gets issued is always exciting. You walk out of the office or open the mail and heave a huge sigh of relief. It’s taken care of. You can stay.

I carry a little card in my wallet that shows I have legal permission to be here. The day I got it was wonderful. I was so happy to know I wouldn’t have to go back through the process again for quite a while.

That little card is a reminder of something more important though. While it shows that I have permission from an earthly government to be here, it also brings to memory the heavenly commission I have.

So on days when I feel tired or frustrated that card tells me it’s a privilege to be here. When I just want to go “home” I think about how I would have felt if I never got that card and had to leave this new place I love.

The King of Heaven has opened the bureaucracies of earth and granted me favor. It might have been a lot of work, but I am thankful He did.

There are missionaries all along the Silk Road today at different points in the visa process: applying, waiting, or even moving because they have been denied a visa. Would you take a moment to pray for them?

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