Busy slow day

Well, today was a busy, though slow day. How does that happen? You ask. Well, I'll tell you.

We started out this morning getting a photograph of Kyle for his passport. In the midst of taking the picture, printing out the passport application, and getting things ready for Keilah and Kendra to stay with Steve's mom; the regional manager over the radio station in Sierra Vista called asking what Steve could do to fix their network. It has been acting up where they can't get out to the Internet many times the past week or so. Steve put him off for a day mentioning that we needed to go to Tucson to get Kyle's birth certificate and apply for the passport.

Well, we left for Tucson to go through the process for the passport. Steve waited an hour and a half to get Kyle's birth certificate and then went to have it apostillized. This is an additional certification for documents to legalize them for other countries. This was done for registering Kyle with the Ecuadorian government. Well, then we sent to stand in line again (hurry up and wait!) to turn in the application for his passport.

We then went to eat and on the way, Pauli was trying once again to call the Ecuadorian Consulate in Los Angeles. We only got the answering machines again and left another message with them. While in town we also went to several stores looking for equipment for Steve to take to Sierra Vista tomorrow as he heads there to try and fix their network.

There you have it. A busy day, but a slow day at the same time with much driving and waiting.

Please continue to pray for us to be able to talk to someone at the consulate to know the requirements for registering Kyle and that Pauli's and Kyle's passports get through the process in time for us to leave.

You can always check our latest requests through the link on the right or directly at http://prayer.themccrackens.org

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a wonderful idea (more than just the day before all the Christmas sales start!) that we should be thinking about throughout the year. When in Ecuador, we don't have a chance to really celebrate as it's not something from the history of that part of the world. Yesterday we spent our Thanksgiving holiday with Steve's parents and his sister's family came over for dinner too. We had gone to a Thanksgiving service earlier in the day and it had started us thinking.

This year we are especially thankful for:

• God's faithfulness to us.
• For Pauli's uneventful pregnancy and the birth of our healthy son.
• For the opportunity to be involved in a church startup and get to know several young Christian families.
• For the opportunity to meet with many of our support team this year.
• For the many answers to prayer with Pauli's citizenship.
• For the chance the girls have had to get to know their grandparents.

Did you get a chance to reflect on that for which you should be thankful? Feel free to leave comments on your reflections.

We expand to five!

Our family officially expanded to five members at 1:18pm on November 13th. Baby Kyle weighed in at seven pounds eleven ounces and 20 inches long. He and his mommy are doing well. You can see photos here.

Newsletter v06.03

Our new newsletter is at the printers. You can get an advance copy by downloading it here (it is 620KB in size). We hope you enjoy it. Please let others know about it as you see fit.

75th Anniversary

HCJB World Radio has been celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. The first broadcast from Quito was December 25, 1931. Pauli has been translating many documents for this celebration and for a small museum that is being put together. You can see the English website for the anniversary here or the Spanish one here.

Ecuador toward the tail end of corrupt countries

Transparency International has just released their 2006 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). The map shows a summary with the lightest colors the countries with the lesser perception of corruption (a higher CPI score) and the darker ones those with more. Click on the map for a larger version. Click here for a full table in PDF form.

"Corruption traps millions in poverty,"” said Transparency International Chair Huguette Labelle. "“Despite a decade of progress in establishing anti-corruption laws and regulations, today'’s results indicate that much remains to be done before we see meaningful improvements in the lives of the world'’s poorest citizens." (From Transparency International's Press Release.)

We continue to see that Ecuador is at the bottom of the range of Latin American countries. Actually, one Ecuadorian newspaper had a headline "Ecuador finds itself in the caboose of the most corrupt countries".

Please pray for Ecuador and the missionaries there as we minister God's love in this environment.

Finally!

After about six years, Pauli has received her U.S. Citizenship on October 20th at 10:07am. The process was one fraught with pitfalls, but we made it. Now we won't have as much trouble with keeping visas current or have as many restrictions on our travel and schedule.

The process started with her initial residency in June, 2000, but required extra travel documents as we left for Ecuador in July, 2001 and a return in July, 2002. With the difficult pregnancy in 2003, we couldn't return and she lost her residency.

We applied for a special visa to reactivate the residency and it was finally granted in June, 2005, but not active till we entered the US at the end of August 2005. Her prior residency time was not applicable for citizenship requirements, but we found out about another catagory (in which missionaries fall) and were able to complete the requirements this year.

We applied for citizenship in June, Pauli had her interview on October third, and the swearing in ceremony was on October 20th.

This picture was taken during the ceremony when they allowed the new citizens to share stories of what they had gone through for their citizenship. Pauli got up (suprising me!) and shared how God had helped through the process and that, as Christians, our ultimate citizenship is in heaven.