Hello my friends! It is good to see you all again! Even though I can’t really… but thanks for coming back to read about my life! And let me tell you, this month has been quite a month.
For this blog I am going to tell a story of what is, hands down, the most embarrassing and humiliating thing that has ever happened to me. It is a story of adventure, decisions, and ultimately failure to the utmost degree! Just writing this brings an odd smirk to my face that is on the brink of laughter. Like when you are responding to a funny message that a friend or family member sent you.
To help you understand better the way team dynamics work and my job as treasurer works I will need to explain some things.
As the treasurer I am in charge of all the team money and the amount that gets spent on certain things on a daily, weekly, and/or monthly basis, depending on the scene for the month. This amount is given to me from a budget I receive from my, essentially, boss that is back in the United States. Side note: Her name is Lindsey and she does an amazing job! She is such a blessing to me, the team, and the squad! Anyway, back to the explaining. Within the budget every treasurer has emergency cash. This emergency cash is USD (United States Dollar) and after we spend it we have to replace it. The way that we replace it always looks different because we have to get USD. This usually means pulling out money in the currency of the current country and finding the best deal to trade for USD. We need the USD for various reasons, but, like you will see in this story, the most often use of it is for Visas. Also, not gonna lie, I have run into some pretty shady ways of doing this. Like being taken in a side room of a restaurant and feeling like I was in the middle of a movie, like the Mafia, and doing some side deal in a restaurant hoping not to get caught. It was actually a riveting experience and feeling.
Now to the story!
When my squad first landed in Ethiopia we had to get our on arrival visas. This meant that we had to get with our team and get everything ready. Then at the end, the treasurer uses emergency cash to get the visas. We do this with the biggest hope in the world that they will take credit card and we won’t have to worry about the emergency cash replacement. If the others don’t then I am alone in that feeling, but I don’t think I’m alone.
Sadly, while going through this process at the airport, we found out two things. 1) Their machine was not working. 2) we were only able to get 30 day, single entry visas. They wouldn’t let us do the other options, we had to go to the city for that. This was a problem for because we needed them to be around a day or 2 longer. The guys also needed double entry because we are also going to Djibouti and need to come back to catch our flight to Oman. For me this means a lot of emergency cash.
After paying for the visas our team came together, got our bags, and the treasurers started to pull out some money for the upcoming week. While pulling out money was going to get enough to replace the USD because there was an exchange place in the airport. My mind was changed, however, when my new TL, who was previously a treasurer, told me to just take his instead. I hesitated a little but decided to just do it. We left the airport and got to the place we were staying and settled in.
The next week consisted of a lot of logistical work. We needed to get a new visa for Ethiopia and we needed to get our visas for Djibouti. We spent almost all of the leftover USD getting the Ethiopian visa part 2. The next step was getting the Djibouti visa. We went there with the hope they would just let us use Ethiopian Birr. I mean, we are in Ethiopia! But, sadly, that was not the case. We had to use USD because we are Americans.
We were already at the Djibouti embassy and had filled out all the papers. So, it was time for me to try to find a place to get USD. My teammate, Jake, came with me on this endeavor. This was not suppose to take long. It hadn’t in other countries. But TIA, this is Africa. What was suppose to be only a short hour or so, turned into hours of looking for a place to try and exchange this money! No bank would help. Going back to the airport didn’t help (this was a stupid long process that went no where). We finally came to a bank that explained a way we could get USD and we decided to try it later. We had gotten word that the Squad Leader was able to cover the cost of the visas and I was just about fed up with all the dead ends.
Jake and I left the bank in search of food. We came to a mini market place, went in, looked at the prices, and of course it was way out of our $4 a day budget range. So we left. As we were walking out a guy stops us and asks if we were looking to exchange money and wanted to deal with him. We were not very surprised by this considering a banker had quietly and inconspicuously informed us that we would be able to make this deal on the black market. So, maybe this was the chance I had been looking for! We were escorted back into the restaurant to talk about rates. They were horrible. They wanted to give us what would be a $200 loss in exchange. I said no. And we left. We stopped and were looking in some of the shops at the market. Jake came back to me and said he found a guy we could exchange with us and he has good rates. I would only take a $20 loss on $670 dollars worth of birr which would help me pay off the visas and get my emergency cash back! But, I wanted to do another day of searching for a better rate, try the recommended way, so we got his number and left.
The next day I handed over what was left of my USD to put a down payment on a van to take us to southern Ethiopia. Then Jake and I left again to look for where we could exchange money. We tried more and more places, only to be hit with more dead ends, even the place that I had high hope for.
I was getting fed up with it and decided I would just suck it up and do the black market money deal that Jake had found. We called the guy and told him to meet us at a spot we knew was public.
We waited about an hour. During this time I thought it would be funny to send a message to my family that read, “wish me luck, about to do a black market deal to get USD”.
The guy finally shows up and we go across the street to meet him. When we get to him he walks over to a car and asks if we have the money. We do and he says give it to me. I ask where his money is and he reaches in the car and grabs an envelope. He then says, “hurry get they money, this is illegal, if we get caught it is five years in prison”. The place we met was by the soccer stadium and there were A LOT of police, so it made sense for him to be on edge then. So I grab the money and hand it to him and he hands the envelope to Jake. I take the envelope and by this time he has hopped in the car and is gone.
Inside the envelope is the right amount of bills and I really examine the bills. My biggest fear becomes a reality in this moment. The money was fake. I had just been robbed of over $600.
My stomach sank. I stopped in my tracks. My mind flooded with all the different things that I could do to make this better. To get the money back. *We could go to the police, *try to get another deal (which would by lying and stealing from someone else so that option went out the window pretty quick for me. I would rather lose the money than do that to someone else), *I could pay it back, *maybe the money will miraculously turn into real money on the walk back- in my mind I heard how selfish that was.
I have felt like a failure and an idot before. But this was the worst. I never thought that I would fall for such a thing. I thought I was better than that. I have always hated failure. It has probably been on of my biggest fears. And here I was with one of the biggest blunders of my entire life. The worst part. It wasn’t even my money alone, it was the teams. I had been entrusted with a task and failed the task.
Standing there I was torn. Torn between disappointment and trying to give myself grace. To see that at least no one was hurt. And yet feeling like I would feel better if I was hurt. Then at least I fought for it. Torn between wanting to wish for this man to get the revenge that the Lord says is his. And yet realizing that he is the very person that I am told to pray for- that the best revenge would be for him to come to the Lord and realize what he has done and have a total life change.
Jake and I began making our way back, got on some public transportation and I clutched my possessions with all my strength. I was not about to lose more. Jake had recently had his phone stolen on one of these public transits. I couldn’t lose more.
I looked at Jake and said, “one day. I will laugh about this… haha”. And then, “what also sucks is I know that God wants me to blog about this”. That was pretty much the extent of our talking on the ride back aside from me expressing how stupid I was.
We got back and I broke the news to the team. I didn’t tell the story. I was not ready for that. We ended up canceling the bus that we had just put a down payment on because we might have to try to save money going forward and a trip to the south was an expensive trip that we were already going to have to pay out of pocket because we were bleeding the budget dry to do it. So, I felt so much better hearing that. Wasting another $100 on top of what I just lost. Perfect!
But thankfully where much grace is needed, much is given. The team was very forgiving and so was Lindsey. Thankfully everything is working itself out. This is not the first time and it won’t be the last something like this happens. There is grace.
Bob Goff, in his book “Love Does”, says that his grandma would say “you are nothing until you have been fired once or twice”. I would agree except I want to take it further. You are nothing until you have been a massive failure once or twice. Essentially can be the same thing. Except I haven’t been fired, at least… not yet. Haha. He also talks about how he loves that God guides people to places where he allows them to fail. It is a surprisingly beautiful thing, I think! God is so perfect that he knows what being a good Father looks like. It means walking alongside His children and allowing them to meet failure. Then being the one to pick them and and show them the nurturing love, like that which we attribute to mothers. God is the perfect parent.
The beautiful thing about this mistake is I can choose to allow it to “shape me or scar me” as Bob Goff says. I choose to allow it to shape me. To be willing to dive more into the gracious parents and family I have been given. The gracious friends that are like my family because we have been adopted into the family of Christ! This is an opportunity for me to allow myself to view failure in the way that God does. That this is a failure that does not affect how much He loves me. It is not a failure that leads anyone away from Him. This is a worldly failure, one that I can certainly learn from! But, it also allows me to see that all I can do now is pray for this man. And pray that the money is used to do something for God that I could have never imagined! I ask that you would join me in saying a prayer for that as well.
I know that this story is long. And I thank you so much for making it to the end! I hope you would still trust me with your money! Haha
Please continue to pray for my team, my squad, and the interactions we are having!
My team is on our way to Djibouti as I write this and we will have some great opportunities there that I will probably not be able to share on here. Pray for what we will be doing there!
This month has honestly been a rough one for me (I also almost lost a credit card because an ATM didn’t give it back but was able to get it back the next day from the bank)! Please pray that as I go through the highs and lows that my eyes will be continually seeking God and what He has for me. That I will learn and grow in all things!
