On January 1 my squad left El Shaddai Children’s Home in Swaziland to make our way to our next destinations in South Africa. 4 teams, mine included, would travel together to Cape Town where 2 would go to one ministry site and the other 2 teams to another.
The bus driver was scheduled to pick us up at 8am to get an early start on the long travel day. Most of us were weary upon waking up after last night’s celebrations of bringing in the New Year. Little did we know that the buses would not come for another 3-and-a-half hours. We didn’t end up leaving until a little after noon. Normal on the WR.
After many tearful goodbyes with the kids and an hour-and-a-half on the road later we made it to the border crossing. All 24 of us piled out of the bus to get our passports checked and stamped. I was in the back of the line so by the time I came in the building the first 3 people from our group had been brought in for questioning by the border officials.
The problem was that we overstayed our 30-day visa in Swaziland by 5 days. The officials were going to make us pay up to 50 USD per person to cross the border equaling a total of 1200 USD! I started to pray to God that we would get through at a cheaper cost. We went to the officials again and negotiated the price to 20 USD per person for a total of 480 USD. The reduced fee was a great deal less yet still more than we were hoping to pay.
Since we had no Swazi currency on hand we tried paying with credit card. Four times we tried swiping and each time the credit card was denied. We tried with another credit card and it, too, got denied. We then offered to pay with USD instead. To our surprise the border officials didn’t want USD so our only option left was to walk to the nearest ATM and pull out the Swazi money to cover the cost while hoping the cards would work.
At this point I started praying to God again. I asked him to go even further and let us cross the border free of charge knowing that he could do far more than I could ask or imagine.
We took four World Race credit cards with us to the ATM, just in case. None of them worked. We walked back to the border crossing and met the officials inside. We explained to them that for some unknown reason our cards weren’t working at the ATM either. We offered to pay in USD a second time and again they refused.
With no options left we asked the officials what they wanted us to do. They told us that we would have to stay the night at the border crossing to wait for our cards to work. Seeing no other way out, we consented to stay there for the night. After a minute or so of taking in that they would have 24 Americans staying at the border, the officials relented and let us go FREE!
When I heard this I knew that God had answered my prayers. We could have spent hundreds of dollars and spent the night at the border in a cramped bus, but God did immeasurably more than what was expected or imagined. Though our options were running out and hope was dwindling, God provided for us in a big way.
32 hours later after leaving Swaziland we all made it to our ministry sites safe and sound!
