Pastor's Blog

Many members of the Friendship family know Mario & Amuy from their time studying in Guatemala.  They are now missionaries in Spain.  The following is part of an e-mail sent out yesterday, 4/30, by Amuy:

“As you know, we have been missionaries here in Spain for almost 5 years, and in this time we have not been able to return to our country. Our passports expired and we had to ask for new passports and ask a new one for our little Lucas. When we started this process, we realized that Lucas is not yet a Spanish citizen because the law here says that he must have first the nationality of his parents, so he must be Panamanian first. Since this, we started a process of traveling with our children to our embassy in Madrid. In the last month we have travelled 2 times (600 miles by car) and finally got our passports. But not Lucas documents for nationality. He is not citizen from any country yet and it worries us.
We were told that Mario must travel to Panama to ask at the offices there for Lucas nationality. So, on last week we found very cheap tickets, the Lord provided us financially and Mario travelled with Josias (for one week) to Panama to make this process. Katherina, Lucas and I stayed in Spain. After one week, Lucas documents were not ready, but it was decided that my father could pick it up from the embassy and mail them to us in Spain.
The real problem has been that on Tuesday when Mario and Josias were coming home, the immigration officers at the airport decided that Josias can’t leave the country because Panama requires a certain stamp in a document that declares that he can travel to Spain. Our embassy here in Spain, is not willing to give this stamp because they said it is not needed.
So right now the situation is that, Mario and Josias are detained in Panama, they can’t leave the country because Josias is not allowed to travel. They are speaking with a lawyer to solve the problem. I am in Spain asking help to our embassy, with no answer yet. They lose the tickets and the airline (and insurance) will not help because they are not responsible about what the immigration office made to us.
Please help us in prayers to our Heavenly Father to help us this get solved. I am just asking to the Lord in my prayers to help my husband and son return home safely.
Thanks for your prayers, love and friendship”