A love worth waiting for: What it takes to obtain a spousal visa
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - When Abraham Duut stepped through the arrival doors at Kansas City International Airport on Wednesday, he wasn’t just coming to the United States for the first time. He was also meeting his 8-week-old son.
“I’m already getting kind of emotional because I know he’s at the airport,” Julie Duut said as her phone app signaled his arrival.
Julie held baby Gabriel in her arms and exhaled deep breaths in anticipation. Her 10-year-old son, Sam Robinson, played lookout and explained the story to a woman who saw KCTV5’s cameras and thought they were celebrities.
It’s a love story that involves faith, comion, and patience. When you fall in love overseas, there’s a lot of waiting before you can build a life together. The man she married 18 months ago in Ghana was finally granted a spousal visa to live with them.
When Abraham arrived, he hugged all three of them, an embrace that seemed to last forever. Julie handed Gabriel to him and Abraham let out a single syllable sound of delight as he kissed Gabriel’s forehead.
They’ve seen each other through face time, but this was a different kind of FaceTime.
“I talk to him, but I can’t get to see them. I can’t get to hug them. And I can’t get to snuggle with them,” Abraham said. “I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time and I’m so happy to be here.”
Julie and Abraham met in Ghana three years ago. She takes American teens on mission trips. Ghana is like a second home. She’s been taking mission trips there for many years. On this fateful trip, in July of 2022, one of the teens broke his femur. An ambulance arrived. Abraham was the EMT who treated the teen on the way to the hospital.
“I’d like to say something magical happened that day,” Julie said, “but honestly, we just fell in love quickly after that.”
He ed the Ghanaian mission leader to see how the boy was doing. Julie started chatting with him on the messaging platform WhatsApp. When she returned to Ghana in 2023, it was for a wedding. Sam wore traditional Ghanaian attire, which he itted was a bit scratchy in the heat. Abraham wore a tuxedo.
Julie’s family peppered the crowd of more than 300 people. She got to work on bringing Abraham back to Manhattan, Kansas with her.
“It’s a lot of paperwork,” Julie said. “You’re proving the same thing over and over and over. I wouldn’t say it’s super technically difficult. The hardest thing is the waiting in between.”
In July of 2024, Julie returned to Ghana. She met his family. She met his emergency services co-workers and posed for a photo in front of the same ambulance where they first met.
Her pregnancy with Gabriel brought complications. He was born on March 31 in Manhattan. Abraham was unable to accompany her to the hospital. The visa application process continued.
She’d been communicating online with a group for spouses of Ghanaians. One woman’s son was now 2-1/2 years old. She was still waiting for her husband’s visa.
“Thankfully, we were on step 11 of 12,” Julie said. “If we were on step four, I think we’d really be scared.”
The wait for visas in Ghana is usually three years, she said. She was able to expedite theirs by going to an embassy in Barbados.
The visa finally came on May 8 and he arranged for the flight that brought the family together on May 28.
Asked what he plans to do now, Abraham said he’s going to soak it in for a while.
“For right now, I am so excited to just be with my family,” he said. “And later I can look at other things.”
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