Visa Situation

I’ve written elsewhere about the situation we are facing regarding our visas to stay in Mongolia, but I’ll try to clarify a bit here. We are currently on student visas until November 15 of this year. Following that, we need to come up with some rationale to stay in the country legally. Our plan was to leave on November 15 for the Philippines, teach a 3-week Bible college course, take a little R&R and return to Mongolia around January 1 to finish out our final year on the field.

I recently started putting out some feelers. I saw an ad in the paper for a foreign relations manager for MongolTax, Mongolia’s first and largest tax consultancy firm. They soon called me for an interview and offered me the job the same day. They wanted me to start full-time the next day. I needed to get permission from our missions agency as well as from the government, so I stalled a bit. The more I considered it, the more uncomfortable I felt about it, so I ended up sending an e-mail today declining the job but asking that they keep my name on file in case the job is available or re-opens at a later date.

So, we are still searching for a different opportunity. Our hopes, in order of preference, are: 1) get a church worker’s visa, 2) Tiff get a part-time job (possibly teaching music or English) and me work full-time at the church on a companion visa, 3) me work part-time and help the church on the side, and 4) me work full-time and try to squeeze in church work. The MongolTax was basically going to work out to priority #4, so I want to make sure we’ve fully investigated the other possibilities before we make a decision.