So you may be wondering how do you hold up a plane that is full heading to South Africa. Well it is quite simple really. All you have to do is get pulled out of line when you are about to board the plane, because there are no more full visa pages left in your passport. Then you get told you will not be able to make the flight…. What do you do next?
As all I could do was grab one of the squad leaders to come with me to the security station. Nothing like last minute things to go wrong. We were told before coming on the Race we needed 13 blank visa pages. Well I had exactly that, but as we have traveled and gotten entry and exit stamps and visas those pages started to dwindle. I have been worried that someing like this might happen. For some reason each country loves to open up to a brand new page and put a stamp on that instead of stamping on a page that only has 1 or 2 stamps. So now I have only 1 page left and according to the rules to get into South Africa I can not get into the country.
At the security counter right away Sarah Anne prayed for this to smooth over. So we start talking to the security guy and he imidiatly tells me that I am not allowed on this flight. My instant reaction was oh crap!! We are in Qatar and it’s just me and Sarah Anne and being told I can’t get on the plane to South Africa. Seriously what can we do? Sarah Anne kept a cool head the whole time, despite the guy next to us making a huge deal out of having the same issue for the same flight. I am praying in my head the whole time. The guy worked with us to see what he could do. After about 45 minutes we got some good news. They were going to let me on the plane!!
Praise God! It took being calm with the guy, talking through what we would have to do (pull another person off the plane because we can’t just be us 2 we have to have a 3rd with us because of AIM rules), and the guy talking to immigration. They decided it was better for the airport to let me fly now then have to get 3 of us on another flight later on. I am so thankful for how this ended up. Thank God for working this all out for us.
The down side to all of that is we made the plane leave late. But hey that is better than having to stay a few days more. I wont lie and say I wasn’t worried a bit. I am so glad that God took care of the situation. He really does watch out for us on the Race.
